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GIDl josh! ELDER crane! THESE HENS HAVE Lai u half a dozen eggs!” 







GID GRANGER 


The Story of a Rough Boy 





WILLIAM O. STODDARD 


\\ 

Author of 
Chuck Purdy 
The Talking Leaves 
Dab Kinzer 
and others 


ILLUSTRATED 



I 


BOSTON 

D LOTHROP COMPANY 


WASHINGTON STREET OPPOSITE BROMFIELD 




I 


Copyright, 1891, 

BY 

D Lothrop Company. 


I 

* 



y 

A) 


\ 




CONTENTS 


CHAPTER I. 

SHARP SKIRMISHING FOR GID . . 9 

CHAPTER II. 

HOW GID OCCUPIED THE HEN-FORT . 30 

CHAPTER III. 

gid’s big speculation .... 58 

CHAPTER IV. 

Marian’s very long evening . . 83 

CHAPTER V. 

GID GRANGER’S NEW IDEAS . . . IOI 

CHAPTER VI. 

;GID GRANGER UNDER DIFFICULTIES . 1 24 

CHAPTER VII. 

LAND AND LAW AND NEWSPAPERS . 1 44 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

GOING AHEAD FASTER AND FASTER . 162 

CHAPTER IX. 

SEED-POTATOES AND ART AND PARLOR FUR- 
NITURE l8o 

CHAPTER X. 

SKIRMISHES IN GID’S CAMPAIGN . . 199 

CHAPTER XI. 

WHAT THE HENS DID FOR THE PIANO . 2l6 

CHAPTER XII. 

HOW gid’s crop was gathered for him 237 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 


“ Gid ! Josh ! Elder Crane ! these hens have laid 

half a dozen eggs ! ” . . . Frontis. 

“ If that isn’t old Crane 1 ” 55 

Gid makes an astonishing proposal ... 73 

Gid and his hen books 98 

“ I’m only fit to make cakes and wash dishes,” 

snapped Marian hi 

The wind was in Gid’s favor somewhat . . 129 

His next call was at the post-office . . . 149 

The morning’s work was going ahead with energy 165 

Jenny Trumbull’s letter explained it . . . 187 

“ She’s got to work for a living,” said he . . 209 

“ There ! ” said Gid, “ just look at that ! ” . . 219 

“ Rube! ” shouted Judge Hopper, “Gid has won 

it ! ” 249 

Coming home 258 



GID GRANGER. 


The Story of a Rough Boy. 

CHAPTER I. 

SHARP SKIRMISHING FOR GID. 

HEN the Indian tribes disappeared, 



they did not leave a great deal behind 


them, except the land and the trees upon it. 
The white men who took possession of the land 
and the trees scratched around among the old 
camp-grounds of the red men and found hardly 
anything there but some long words. Some of 
these no white man’s tongue could do anything 
with, but others were just what was wanted. 

One tribe had no more use for the word 
Genentaha, and the white men picked it up and 
made a handle of it. They named hotels, banks, 
insurance companies, a lake, a river, a whole 


9 


IO 


SHARP SKIRMISHING FOR GID. 


county, and then a pair of villages wore it, not 
only as a handle, but as a kind of feather. 

Some people said it was a mile, southerly 
from the village of Genentaha Hill to the old 
Granger farm, and others said it was only half 
a mile. Perhaps it made a difference whether 
they began at the post-office corner, in the 
middle of the village, opposite Crumb & Corri- 
gan’s store, or whether they began at the big 
poplar, three feet beyond the corporation line. 
Any road is longer in some kinds of weather, or 
if you don’t want to go or if you are lame of one 
leg, or of both. 

The thin, dark, long-nosed old man who was 
limping through the half-melted slush, along 
the road from Genentaha Hill to Joshua Gran- 
ger’s house, that March morning, had good 
reasons for calling it a long mile and he said so, 
and he also made remarks about the village. 

“ Hill ? ” he said. “ Flat as a floor. Ground 
rises from there to ’way beyond Josh’s house. 
It isn’t any kind of hill. Oh ! how my legs hurt 


SHARP SKIRMISHING FOR GID. 


II 


me. My marching days won’t ever come back 
again, but I’ve got to see Josh.” 

A few minutes later he exclaimed : 

“ There’s old Josh at the gate. There’s Gid, 
too, a-whistling something. He’ll never be the 
man his father was. Pity, too ! ” 

A deep, harsh voice hailed him, friendly 
enough, as he came nearer, and the hail was 
answered in a tone that seemed to tell some- 
thing about the pain in the lame legs. 

“ Got a tetch of Gettysburg, have you ? ” 
added the voice from the gate. Its owner was 
a powerfully-built man, with iron-gray hair, rug- 
ged features and a hard, set expression of mouth 
and chin. He seemed to have come to the gate 
to sun himself, for he was doing nothing else. 

“ This ’ere thawing weather fetches it out, 
Josh Granger, and the rheumatiz, too, but I had 
an errand that just had to be done.” 

“ Couldn’t you find a ride ? ” asked Mr. 
Granger. “Anything you want of me?” 

“No, I couldn’t,” said the lame man. “Tell 


12 


SHARP SKIRMISHING FOR GID. 


you what, Josh, another of the boys has got his 
discharge, and we’ve got to do the right thing. 
Died, at last, of a hit he got the same hour I 
got mine.” 

“You don’t say ! Well, I’m ready. Do you 
want a five or a ten ? ” 

“ Ten, Josh. We must do the right thing. 
He was in the Ninth Virginia. One of Armis- 
tead’s men, that you and I met by Webb’s guns, 
on the crest of Cemetery Hill. How he got 
away up here, I can’t guess, but I knew his 
face ” — 

“ He wasn’t one of these, then ? ” said 
Granger, opening his coat. 

A sort of coppery-looking star of metal hung 
by a dingy ribbon from a clasp near his left 
shoulder and just such another appeared on the 
left breast of the lame man. 

“ Well, no,” said the latter, “ but we can’t go 
back on one of Pickett’s men, especially Armis- 
tead’s brigade. There never were better men 
on this earth than the fellows we gripped with 


SHARP SKIRMISHING FOR GID. 


*3 


on that ridge, that third day of the Gettysburg 
fight.” 

“ Count me in ! Count me in ! ” said old 
Josh Granger with energy. “ Did he send for 
you ’cause you was a preacher, Sergeant? ” 

“ Well, no, hardly,” said the lame man, “ but 
he said that they said that Elder Crane had 
been a soldier, and I went, and we didn’t more’n 
have time to have one talk, and for him to know 
that I was in Hall’s brigade that day.” 

“I’d like to have seen him, I would! ’’ex- 
claimed old Josh. “They did come up the hill 
splendid ! They were men ! ” 

“ I was just saying something like that,” said 
Sergeant Crane, “ when he heard ’em sound the 
recall.” 

His old comrade evidently knew what he 
meant by that, for he responded, “ You and I’ll 
have to hear it, one of these days. Was there 
anything more ? ” 

“No, but I heard him say * Forward,’ and he 
was gone. That was a great day, Joshua 


14 


SHARP SKIRMISHING FOR GID. 


Granger. He was there. I don’t care which 
side he was on.” 

“ No more do I,” said Josh. “ The boys of 
Hall’s brigade and Armistead’s — well, Sergeant, 
men were men in those days ! Boys ain’t what 
they used to be. There’s more loafers ! The vil- 
lage just swarms with ’em ! ” 

“ If there’s anything in this world that I hate, 
Josh Granger, it’s a slouch ! There weren’t 
any slouches on Cemetery Hill that day. Do 
you remember Cushing ? Wasn’t much more’n 
a boy. No more were you or I. Hadn’t but 
one gun left of his battery. Fired the last 
round himself. Fired it while he was dying. I 
heard him shout, ‘ Webb, I’ll give ’em one more 
shot ! Good-by ! ’ and he fell as the piece went 
off. The boys had the real grit in ’em in those 
days. I do just hate a slouch ! ” 

“ So do I ! ” exclaimed the grim, iron-jawed old 
farmer, and they went on in a chat of a quarter 
of an hour, about the times when men were men, 
before Mr. Granger said to Sergeant Crane : 


SHARP SKIRMISHING FOR GID. 


*5 


“ Come on in, Elder ; you won’t get away till 
after dinner. I’ll get out the buggy, then, and 
Gid ’ll drive you far’s you want to go.” 

Only a few yards from them, inside of the 
fence, lay a remarkably large cluster of pine- 
shavings and more were dropping upon the 
crusty, grimy snow which the thaw was at work 
at, for a boy of about fifteen years of age, and 
a sharp, hard-working jack-knife were busy with 
a piece of dry pine board. Some people say 
that whittling is not a useful occupation, but 
there are two sides to that question. Both 
sides of Gid Granger’s piece of pine were being 
whittled away pretty rapidly, and there was a 
kind of flush upon his face. 

It was not by any means a handsome face. 
He resembled his father too much for that. It 
was tanned and freckled and almost sallow, and 
his dark brown eyes looked out under thick, 
bushy eyebrows. He was tall, too, for his age, 
and had a lank, ungainly, half-grown look. His 
hands were large and so were his feet, and the 


1 6 SHARP SKIRMISHING FOR GID. 

strong, cowhide boots into which his trousers 
were tucked made his feet look larger still. 
The expression of his mouth would have pre- 
pared almost anybody to say : “ Humph ! Will- 
ful ! Needs to be taken down a peg or two. 
He’ll get it, somehow.” 

Most likely he would, and there are a great 
many people who know that it ought to be done. 
If a boy has any will in him it must be crushed 
and taken out, or you will have a man some day 
that will be plunging right ahead and grappling 
with something. His backbone ought to be 
taken out at the same time, or he’ll never bend 
easily when another man or something wants to 
double him up. 

“The boys nowadays are all slouches, are 
they ? ” said Gid to himself. “ I’m a slouch, am 
I ? We’ll see ’bout that. Oh ! but wouldn’t I 
have given something to see those crack regi- 
ments grip one another, among those cannon, on 
the crest of that hill ! The Rebs got licked, but 
the old man won’t allow a word to be said 


SHARP SKIRMISHING FOR GID. 


*7 


against ’em. Ten dollars ! I wish he’d give 
me ten dollars. I’m bound to have some money, 
somehow.” 

If he had been inside of the house just then 
he might have heard his father say something 
interesting. 

“No, Elder Crane — Sergeant, I mean — it 
isn’t good for boys to have money. Not unless 
they earn it, and it isn’t more’n half safe, then. 
They’d orter be kep’ down.” 

“ That’s what I say, and girls, too,” added a 
steady, firm-spoken woman’s voice. “I agree 
with Josh. There’s too much nonsense nowa- 
days. ’Twasn’t so when I was a girl. Fact is, 
girls ain’t what they used to be.” 

“Too much schooling!” exclaimed Elder 
Crane, bringing his hand heavily down upon a 
table beside him. “ Too much eddication ! 
Too little out and out hard work, like they used 
to have in your day and mine.” 

“ Don’t know but Marian ort to have another 
term or so at school,” said Mrs. Granger. “ I 


l8 SHARP SKIRMISHING FOR GID. 

s’pose she had, but Gid doesn’t need no more. 
He’s been right along, now, term after term, and 
he’s learned ’most everything. Can’t say that 
he studies, neither. He just reads.” 

il Don’t let him ! Don’t let him ! ” exclaimed 
Elder Orderly Sergeant Crane, with energy. 
“ It ’ll spile him, sure’s you do. Books and 
newspapers and all sorts of nonsense are turn- 
ing all the boys and girls, nowadays, into 
slouches. Ruin of ’em ! They don’t need to 
have but just ’bout so much and no more.” 

“ Gid and Marian won’t get any more, not if 
I know myself, and I think I do,” growled old 
Josh Granger. 

“ I’m looking out for Marian, Elder Crane,” 
said Mrs. Granger. “ She won’t get any false 
notions in this house. Gid won’t, neither.” 

Gid missed hearing all of that, but not a word 
of it was lost by the quick ears of a black-haired 
girl who was rubbing some milk-pans in the 
kitchen adjoining the sitting-room where the old 
folk were talking. Gid was already well on his 


SHARP SKIRMISHING FOR GID. 1 9 

way to the village, dragging after him a long, 
strongly-built hand-sled. 

While Mr. Granger and his wife and Sergeant 
Elder Crane were still busily discussing the 
marked falling off in the various qualities of 
modern boys and girls, the sled was drawn up 
in front of a long row of piles of lumber. 

“Come for your laths, Gid?” asked a short, 
fat, red-faced man, with a chuckle in his voice. 
“ What’s the reason you’re not at the ’Cademy ? ” 

“ ’Cause there isn’t any,” said Gid, “ and 
there won’t be till next Monday, and there 
won’t be, then, unless the trustees can find out 
who’s to be Principal and who isn’t.” 

“ Hope they’ll find out, then,” said the fat 
man. “ There’s too many boys turned loose all 
over the village. Not one on ’em wants to go 
to work, nuther.” 

“Are these my laths, Deacon Johnson?” 
asked Gid, with a pointing finger. 

“ Four bundles of ’em, Gid,” said the 
deacon, “and here’s your half-dollar. That’s 


20 


SHARP SKIRMISHING FOR GID. 


pretty good pay for four Saturday forenoons. 
Guess you larned just as much, though.” 

“ Well, I did,” said Gid, “ but I earned these 
laths and the four shillings, too.” 

“Go ahead, Gid,” laughed the fat man. 
“ What you want of laths beats me.” 

He had not been told before, and he was not 
then, for Gid Granger’s mouth shut like a steel- 
trap. He put his bundles of laths upon the 
sled and hauled it away, through a cross street 
which led into the main street of the village 
of Genentaha Hill. As he reached that, Gid 
stopped pulling suddenly. 

“ What on earth does that mean ! ” he ex- 
claimed. “ An auction ? Well, I never ! ” 

Leaving the sled where it was, he pushed his 
way into quite a crowd of men and boys in front 
of a rickety old building, the door of which was 
ornamented by a blazing red flag. 

“ What is it ? ” replied one of the men to a 
question of Gid’s. “ Why, old Hotchkiss is 
giving up the chicken business. He’s tried 


SHARP SKIRMISHING FOR GID. 


21 


most everything. Now they say he’s in doubt 
whether to go back to cow-doctoring or to study 
law and be a judge, or to open a bank, or to 
run for Congress. He never stuck to one thing 
more’n a year.” 

“ Going ! Going ! This fine lot of choice 
poultry,” shouted the auctioneer. “They’re 
all that’s left. Ten thoroughbred Plymouth 
Rock hens and a rooster. Warranted sound 
and kind and well-broken. Give fourteen 
quarts of milk every day. Won’t ravel or fade. 
All wool. Oak tanned. What do I hear for 
this last lot ? Going ” — 

Bids followed fast, but they were low, for 
many fine fowls had already been struck off and 
the market was supplied. The auctioneer’s fun 
rattled on, and the crowd laughed and the poul- 
try cackled and crowed on all sides. 

“ Two and a half ” — 

“ And a half — half — half — do I hear any 
more ? ” shouted the auctioneer. 

“ Two — seventy — five,” replied Gid. 


22 


SHARP SKIRMISHING FOR GID. 


“ Three quarters — quarters — arters — do I 
hear the three — three — ’ee ? ” asked the merry 
auctioneer rapidly. 

“Three dollars,” called another voice. 

“And a quarter,” added Gid, with a long 
breath, but without any other token of excite- 
ment. 

“ Three and a quarter — ten hens and a 
rooster — all in good order — last time — do I 
hear any more — more — last time — going — 
going — gone — sold to Gid Granger, and he’s 
going into the egg business.” 

“ Terms cash,” said a placid-looking man 
behind a desk, inside of the rickety building, as 
Gid came up to it. 

“ All right, Dr. Hotchkiss,” said Gid, as he 
laid down the half-dollar the lumber merchant 
had paid him. “ You’ve owed me two seventy- 

five ever since last fall, for driving your cows. 

• • 

That makes it all square. I’ll take home the 
chickens.” 

“ Hold on a minute, Gid ! Hold on a 


SHARP SKIRMISHING FOR GID. 


2 3 


minute ! ” replied the placid man. “ I’ll ’tend 
to these folks and then I’ll see you ’bout that.” 

He pocketed the half-dollar, however, and 
Gid walked out. In half a minute more his 
sled was pulled alongside of the lath-work 
crates containing his purchases, five hens and 
a rooster in one crate and five hens in another. 
They were both upon the sled in a jiffy, the four 
bundles of laths were stacked on top of them, 
and Gid pulled away up the street. 

That last lot of poultry had been sold cheap, 
paid for and delivered, and it was on its way to 
its new abode. The trials and tribulations of its 
new owner were by no means ended, however, 
when the placid man came to the door and asked : 

“ Where is young Gideon Granger ? I’d like 
to speak to him.” 

“ Gid ? ” replied the auctioneer. “ Why, he’s 
away up the street yonder, and half the boys in 
the village are pelting him. Can’t you hear his 
rooster crow when a ball hits the coop ? ” 

“ You don’t say ! ” somewhat solemnly replied 


24 


SHARP SKIRMISHING FOR GID. 


Dr. Hotchkiss. “ He has walked right away 
with all those hens and the rooster ! ” 

So he had, and the village boys were out of 
school that day, and the snow, all that remained 
of it, was soft, so that it packed uncommonly 
well. Balls made of it went straighter than 
usual, and hit harder. It was Mart Pepper 
who had led off and set all the balls a-going, 
and he was the best pitcher in Genentaha Hill, 
because he was cross-eyed and left-handed and 
was at the bottom of every class he was in at 
the Academy. 

“Oh! but wasn’t that a stinger,” exclaimed 
Gid, as Mart Pepper’s first shot took him be- 
tween the shoulders. “ I’ll pay somebody for 
that ! ” 

Before he could gather wet snow enough to 
make any payment with, a whole battery seemed 
to have opened upon him. The fact was that 
there was a feud as old as Adam, or nearly so, 
between the village boys and the farm boys at- 
tending the Academy. On ordinary days the 


SHARP SKIRMISHING FOR GID. 


2 5 


village boys were in the minority and had to 
look out for themselves, but just now a chance 
for a successful piece of war had come to them 
unexpectedly. 

“Gid’s a pretty rough fellow,” said one of 
them to Mart. “ We’d best keep our distance.” 

“ I don’t care how rough he is ! Give it to 
him ! Let him have it ! ” zealously returned 
the crack shot, as he landed a hard pellet on 
Gid’s right leg, just above the knee. 

The poultry-buyer stood his ground desper- 
ately and proved himself a very good marksman. 

“ There goes Pelt Ogden,” he said, between 
his teeth. “ I’ve chucked his mouth full. He 
shouldn’t have had it open. But then he never 
shut it yet that I know of.” 

The missiles flew merrily from nearly a dozen 
hands. The rooster crowed, the hens cackled. 
An old lady in a house near by put her head out 
of a second-story window and scolded. A lost 
ball hit a stray dog and sent him away, yelping. 
It was the hardest kind of a fight for a few 


2 6 


SHARP SKIRMISHING FOR GID. 


minutes, blit Gid felt that there was no possi- 
bility of winning a victory. He thought of his 
father and Sergeant Crane and the rest, on 
Cemetery Hill, at the Gettysburg fight, and it 
helped him a great deal until all of a sudden 
he seemed to see a shower of stars. 

“ That’s the way men feel when they go down 
in battle,” was the thought in his mind as he 
tried to open his eyes. 

He got them open, but his left eye closed 
again right away, for a hard-packed ball from 
the hand of Mart Pepper had landed right upon 
the cheek-bone, close by it, and Gid was a dis- 
abled soldier. 

“ Cushing gave them one more shot,” he said 
fiercely, as he sent the ball in his hand with all 
his strength. His right eye was open and his 
aim was peculiarly good, for the next thing he 
saw as he grasped tfie rope handle of his sled, 
was Mart Pepper bending over and kind of 
dancing and holding his right ear as if he were 
afraid of its falling off. 


SHARP SKIRMISHING FOR GIt>. 


2 7 


Spang — spat — clack — swish — came the 
balls as Gid tugged away at his load. He was 
retreating from a lost battlefield, but he did it 
bravely and in good order, taking with him his 
cackling prisoners and his wounded eye. That 
is, he was pretty badly snowball-wounded all 
over, and he limped a little on his right leg. 

The village boys did not follow far after Gid 
gave it up. The poultry quieted down. Gid’s 
hits ceased to smart, except the ones on his face 
and leg. He toiled and tugged along with his 
load until at last he reached the wagon gate of 
his own houseyard. 

There, on the piazza, were his father and 
mother and Marian and Elder Crane, very much 
as if they were waiting for him. Hardly, how- 
ever, had his father sternly demanded of him 
where he had been, what he had been doing, 
and what was all that rubbish on the sled, be- 
fore the rooster began to crow vociferously, 
while all the hens at once began to cackle as if 
for their lives. 


28 


SHARP SKIRMISHING FOR GID. 


“More chickens!” exclaimed his father. 
“ What do we want of more chickens ! ” 

“Gideon ! ” exclaimed his mother, “ what’s the 
matter with your eye ? Have you been fight- 
ing?” 

“ What are those laths for ? ” asked his father. 

“ New coop,” said Gid, sturdily, “ and I’ve 
collected that two dollars and seventy-five cents 
that Dr. Hotchkiss owed me. Took it out in 
chickens. The village boys pelted me. Oh ! 
how my eye does hurt.” 

More questions brought more answers, and 
all the while Elder Crane seemed to be in a 
strange chuckle of delight. 

“Josh, my boy,” he said, at last, “let him 
alone. Best thing he ever did. Let him have 
his coop.” 

“Of course he’ll have his coop,” said Mrs. 
Granger, who had been inspecting the new ar- 
rivals with the air of a woman who knew all 
about birds. “ He can build as much coop — 
Sakes alive ! what’s this ? Did I ever hear the 


SHARP SKIRMISHING FOR GID. 


2 9 


like! O Gid! — one, two, three, four, five, six 
— Gid ! Josh ! Elder Crane ! These hens have 
laid half a dozen eggs before he got ’em home, 
and eggs are sixteen cents a dozen in the vil- 
lage this very day. Go right in, Gid, and put a 
handkerchief over your eye. It’s turning black 
and blue. I and Marian’ll look out for the 
eggs and the hens.” 


CHAPTER II. 


HOW GID OCCUPIED THE HEN-FORT. 

J OSH,” said Elder Crane, “ Gid’s an awful 
raw recruit, but I guess he’ll pass muster. 
I don’t know of anybody else that ever collected 
anything of Dr. Hotchkiss.” 

“ It’ll be the blackest kind of a black eye,” 
growled the old farmer, and it sounded as if he 
were trying hard not to chuckle. 

“ Dozen of ’em on one, and Gid stood his 
ground,” exclaimed the sergeant rather than 
the elder, with a stamp that made him wince in 
both legs. “ Retreated in good order and 
saved his baggage. No slouch about him, Josh. 
He’ll stand fire, and you’d ought to drill him 
right along.” 

“ I’m going to keep him right down to it,” 
3 ° 


HOW GID OCCUPIED THE HEN-FORT. 3 1 


said his father sternly. “ He’s under discipline, 
he is. There won’t be any nonsense ’bout his 
bringin’ up, I tell ye.” 

“Josh,” said the elder, “you keep him right 
up to the mark. He’ll shoot straight, some day, 
if you do your duty by him.” 

The two old men went to the barn and got 
out the buggy and drove away, to do the right 
thing by the funeral honors of the Virginian 
whom they had first met among the guns of 
Webb’s batteries on Cemetery Hill the third 
day at Gettysburg. 

Gid ate his dinner while his mother and 
Marian were clearing away the dishes. The 
red bandanna handkerchief around his head, 
covering his darkened eye, made a very remark- 
able-looking boy of him. It did not give him 
any beauty, however, and Marian told him so, 
while she was carrying out the plates. 

“ Mother,” said she, in the kitchen, “ I do 
wish Gid wasn’t quite so rough. Seems to me 
he’s always fighting.” 


32 HOW GID OCCUPIED THE HEN-FORT. 

“ He couldn’t help it this time,” said Mrs. 
Granger. “ I’m glad he showed fight.” 

“So am I,” said Marian. “Of course he 
stood up for himself. I wouldn’t give a cent 
for him if he didn’t. Shall I put away those 
eggs ? ” 

“ No, you needn’t,” said her mother. “ Let 
’em alone. They’re Gid’s, and they’re not to 
be mixed up with the rest.” 

“One egg’s as good as another,” said Marian. 
“ They’re all alike.” 

At that very moment, however, she was making 
one of them look like no other egg in the world. 
She had picked up a bit of charcoal with a 
sharp edge and she was drawing lines on the 
white shell. 

“ There,” she said, “ that’s like him.” 

“ If it isn’t Gid ! ” exclaimed her mother. 
“Now you just stop your nonsense and go on 
with the dishes. When I was a girl of your 
age I could do more work in an hour than you 
do in all day. There’s butter to churn ” — 


HOW GID OCCUPIED THE HEN-FORT. 33 


“ 0, dear ! ” murmured Marian, and the truth 
was that her movements were not any too 
rapid. 

She took in the egg with her and showed it 
to Gid at the table. 

“ It’s well my shell’s harder’n that is,” said 
he. “ Guess there’s something or other hatch- 
ing in mine just now.” 

“ ’Twon’t be worth much,” said Marian. 

“ You hold on a while,” he said, as he finished 
his coffee, and he was out of the house almost 
before she or his mother knew it. 

It was not long before they heard a very busy 
hammering out near the barn. 

“ What’s that, mother ? ” asked Marian. 
“ What on earth is Gid doing? ” 

“Guess he’s at work at his new coop,” she 
said. “ I hope he’ll have it done before his 
father gets home.” 

She was a tall woman, and it must have been 
from her that Marian got her dark eyes and her 
coal-black hair and her right to be taller than 


34 HOW GID OCCUPIED THE HEN-FORT. 


other girls of sixteen. As for Gid, he promised 
to be his father over again, only darker. 

“ Mother,” said Marian, “ isn’t Gid ever to 
go to school again ? ” 

“ Your father needs him on the farm,” replied 
Mrs. Granger, soberly. “ Times are harder than 
they used to be.” 

“ We’re not really poor, are we, mother ? ” 
asked Marian, with a soured and discontented 
look. “ I do hate being poor.” 

“ No, Mattie,” said Mrs. Granger, “ we’re 
not poor and we don’t mean to be. You’re too 
young to know ’bout business, but your father 
has his troubles. He signed notes for men. 
Perhaps he’s got to pay ’em. We can’t throw 
away a cent of money, and farmin’ doesn’t pay 
as it used to pay.” 

“ O, mother ! ” said Marian, “ I wish we were 
not farmers. I wish we lived in a city. I’d 
like to see something. I’d like to know some- 
thing. We don’t even take a newspaper. We’re 
kind o’ shut up, here.” 


f 


HOW GTD OCCUPIED THE HEN-FORT. 


“ We can’t afford nonsense, Mattie,” said 
Mrs. Granger. “ We’re goin’ to keep what 
we’ve got, if we can keep it. Your father’s a 
liberal man, too, and he gives away all he’d 
ought to give. More, too, I’m ’fraid.” 

Her face wore a very thoughtful expression 
as she said that, for Sergeant-Elder Crane had 
carried away a ten dollar bill, and she had her 
doubts concerning that particular piece of 
liberality. 

“ He never gave me anything, nor Gid,” 
murmured Marian. “ Gid had to earn the 
money for his laths, even.” 

“It didn’t hurt him,” said Mrs. Granger, 
laughing, and there was a touch of pride in her 
manner, as she added : “ It was real sharp of 
him to bid off those hens. Not many boys of 
his age’d have thought of that way of beating 
Dr. Hotchkiss.” 

Gid was beating something else, just then, 
and they could hear the racket his hammer was 
making. He had undertaken quite a job. 


36 HOW GID OCCUPIED THE HEN-FORT. 

The old cow shed, to the left of the barns, 
was a long affair and narrow. It had not been 
used in a long time, for the Grangers were not 
keeping as much stock as they once did. The 
neighbors said that old Josh Granger was 
running down a little, and his farm was run- 
ning down, too, and his debts were coming 
down on him. That old cow shed had its own 
lot, lying alongside of it and longer, and there 
had been nothing but weeds in that lot for 
years, but the fence around it was good enough. 
Gid was at work on that fence with a hammer 
and nails and a lot of old boards. It was a 
very high fence, built to keep in unruly cattle, 
and he was making it a lath-length higher, to 
keep in unruly hens. It was wonderful how fast 
those laths were nailed on and what a line of 
wooden teeth they made. The job was half 
done when his mother came out to look 
at it. 

“ What will his father say ! ” she exclaimed. 
“Well, it can’t be helped. He must have some 


HOW GID OCCUPIED THE HEN-FORT. 37 


place to keep his own hens and it isn’t worth a 
cent for anything else.” 

“There they are, mother,” he said, “and all 
the hens I had before I got these are going to 
be put in here, soon as I can put up some cross 
fences.” 

She knew what that meant and only said, 
“Keep ’em in squads.” 

“ I’m going to cut up the cattle shed into six 
coops and the lot into six pens,” said Gid. 

“ But what’ll you feed your hens on ? ” asked 
his mother. “ Corn’s sixty cents a bushel and 
your father hasn’t a peck to spare, over his 
seed-corn.” 

“ I sha’n’t ask him for a kernel, mother, but I 
want my own eggs,” said Gid. 

“ I’ll ’tend to that,” she said suddenly, and 
she turned away as if she were in a hurry. 

“ Mother, what is it ? ” asked Marian, as Mrs. 
Granger came into the house. 

“ Take those eggs of Gid’s down cellar and 
put ’em on the shelf in the back store-room. 


38 HOW GID OCCUPIED THE HEN-FORT. 

Here, these eight were laid by his other hens. 
Put ’em into the basket.” 

“ Why, mother, what’s he going to do with 
’em? Set ’em?” asked Marian. 

“ All his hens have got to go into his own 
coop, soon as it’s dark and they can be taken 
on the roost,” said her mother. “ Gid’s goin* 
to have the biggest coop ! I’m glad to see him 
takin’ hold of somethin’. He’ll come out right. 
You’ll see.” 

Marian’s errand to the cellar was a long one, 
for she came up by the outside way and went 
off to the old cattle shed to see it made a coop 
of. That was where her mother found her, after 
vainly shouting down the cellar stairs that the 
churn was ready for business. Marian was busy, 
drawing the outline map of a giant rooster on 
the side of the shed, while Gid was fiercely 
hammering away upon one of his partitions, 
inside. 

“ Mattie, you come right into the house and 


’tend to that butter ! ” 


HOW GID OCCUPIED THE HEN-FORT. 39 

“ All right, mother,” said Marian cheerfully, 
as the charcoal swept out a black tail feather. 

“If I don’t just have to follow you right up 
and drive ye! ” exclaimed Mrs. Granger. 

Gid tried to whistle, but he failed, for his lips 
had not yet recovered from the effect of one of 
Mart Pepper’s snowballs, but he did very well 
with his partition, for it had been more than 
half made for him when that old rickety cow 
shed had at the first been divided into stalls. 

“ Dividing the lot ’ll be the toughest work,” 
said Gid, “ but I can set up old rails and nail 
laths across. I shall need piles and piles of 
laths. Every hen I’ve got must lay all the eggs 
she knows how. I can buy a bushel of corn, or 
a bundle of laths, or another good hen, with 
every two dozen that’s laid. I ought to have a 
dozen, to a dozen and a half, every day.” 

During all that time, Gid’s father had been 
busy in the village. He had discussed church 
affairs with the minister of the church he be- 
longed to ; and school affairs with the Academy 


40 HOW GID OCCUPIED THE HEN-FORT. 

trustees; and all the news of the day, at the 
drug-store and the post-office and in Crumb & 
Corrigan’s store ; and he had talked about farms 
and farming, and how bad the crops were, now- 
adays, with a round dozen of farmers, of all 
sorts. In fact, he had made a real hard-working 
afternoon of it and he came home tired and 
satisfied, to tell Mrs. Granger all about it. 

“What’s Gid been doing?” he asked. “Any 
more eggs ? ” 

“ His other hens are laying,” said Mrs. Gran- 
ger. “ I told him he might have the old cow- 
shed and lot to keep ’em in. I knew you’d 
agree to that.” 

“ He’ll have to furnish his own feed,” said 
his father. “ I was thinking we’d best sell what 
poultry we had left. It doesn’t pay to keep hens.” 

“I don’t know ’bout that,” said Mrs. Granger; 
“we’d miss our eggs. Josh, just you let Gid 
alone. He’ll find his feed.” 

“ Let him alone, Maria ? Well, he can have 
the shed. Tell you what, though, it’s all over 


HOW GID OCCUPIED THE HEN-FORT. 41 


the village how he got even with Hotchkiss. 
Nobody else has collected a dollar of him.” 

“He’s worked hard on that coop,” she said. 

“ I’ll go and look at it, I guess,” replied her 
husband, and probably it was well for Gid that 
his job was so well advanced. His father came 
and stared at it for nearly a minute before he 
exclaimed : 

“ If I’d ha’ known you meant to take the 
whole shed and the lot too ! Well, I told your 
mother I would, and I’ll keep my word, but it’s 
time and money thrown away.” 

“ Guess not, father,” said Gid, still hammering. 

“You’ve got all the chores to do to-night,” said 
his father. “ I’m tired. You won’t go back to 
school anyhow, no matter how the trustees finish 
their quarrel. I’ll have something better for 
you to do right away, than tinkering around a 
hen-coop — I will.” 

Gid knew what that meant, and his young 
mouth settled into an expression very like that 
upon his father’s. 


42 HOW GID OCCUPIED THE HEN-FORT. 

It was nearly supper time then, and Gid put 
away his hammer and nails. All of them ate 
supper and there was nothing to keep the rest 
long out of bed after that, but it was different 
with Gid. The cows were milked, the pigs, 
cattle, horses and poultry were fed and cared 
for. There was wood to split and bring in and 
water to draw. Mrs. Granger and Marian did 
their part with some energy, but the outside 
burden fell upon Gid, and he was a tired, lame 
and not over good-tempered boy when at last 
he went to bed. 

“I feel just awful, Mattie,” he said. 

“Well, Gid,” she responded, “I do say it is 
just awful ! I hate living on a farm, anyhow. 
We don’t have anything and we work hard all 
the time. I wish I had a book to read, or some- 
thing to look at.” 

“Mattie,” said Gid, “just you wait. Some 
of my hens are going to lay some eggs you 
never saw before.” 

“ Does your eye hurt you ?” she asked. 


HOW GID OCCUPIED THE HEN-FORT. 43 


“ Guess it did, for a while, but it’s all over 
now,” he said. “I ought to have eggs enough, 
to-morrow morning, to go for a bushel of corn.” 

“ Hope you will ! ” sighed Marian, and she 
went upstairs very much as if she did not really 
wish to go there or anywhere else. 

Four or five minutes later Gid went up, limp- 
ing a little, but feeling as if he were quite willing 
to go. 

“ Wish it was morning, too,” he said, as he 
undressed himself, and that thought went to 
bed with him. He lay there, counting hens, 
and eggs, and bushels of corn, and bundles of 
laths. He was still awake while his sister was 
already in the middle of a dream that was full 
of fine houses, crowded streets, rooms hung 
with pictures, tables covered with books and 
prints, and of a wonderful sort of silent music, 
such as comes in dreams. 

Gid had a reason for turning his thoughts to 
the kitchen clock and the very last thing in his 
mind was a picture of its white face with the 


44 HOW GID OCCUPIED THE HEN-FORT. 

hour-hand on the numeral v. Neither he nor 
anybody else in the house knew what was going 
on in the world afterwards. 

Perhaps a healthy boy can do two or three 
hours of sleep in one hour, if he has brought 
home new chickens, been badly snowballed and 
then had all the chores to do. At all events, 
Gid Granger slept very fast, that night. He 
seemed to get it all done, at last, and he awoke 
of his own accord. The room was as dark as a 
pocket, but he expected it to be so and he felt 
absolutely sure that it was to-morrow morning. 

“Ain’t I stiff and lame though ! ” he exclaimed, 
when he tried to jump out of bed. “Ah-h! Dear 
me ! Well, I’ll do the chores as quick as I can. 
Then for that coop. It’s got to come right 
along. It’s cold enough.” 

It is apt to be so in March, early in the morn- 
ing, but Gid was used to it and he was quickly 
dressed, in spite of an occasional shiver and of 
a general idea that all his joints needed oiling. 

“I’ll find out what time it is,” he said to him- 


HOW GID OCCUPIED THE HEN-FORT. 


self, as he groped his way downstairs. “ Guess 
I haven’t disturbed anybody. Hope it isn’t 
late. All my chores have got to be done before 
breakfast.” 

He had entirely forgotten what his father had 
said about work on the farm after breakfast, 
and he was evidently calculating upon owning 
his. time, that day. He found a candle and 
lighted it and walked half stealthily out into the 
kitchen. It was all cold and dark and silent and 
he held up his candle before the clock on the 
mantelpiece. The minute hand stood straight 
up but the hour hand leaned away over and was 
just passing beyond the Roman numeral iii. 

“Three o’clock!” exclaimed Gid. “Is that 
all ? I won’t go to bed again, anyhow. I’ll set 
all the fires a-going, first thing I do.” 

There was a certain kind of excitement in 
being up so early, with a plan of his own to 
carry into effect. Perhaps he had never before 
felt quite so good and quite so bad, at the same 
time, as he did that morning. He felt better 


46 HOW GID OCCUPIED THE HEN-FORT. 

after the fires began to roar and after the sitting- 
room and kitchen began to be a little warm and 
cheerful. There was plenty to do, indoors and 
out, and he worked busily on until four o’clock. 
Then he took a big drink of milk, and the kettle 
was humming and he put on the coffee-pot and 
dropped a couple of eggs into the kettle. 

“I’m starved hungry,” he said to himself. 
“I’ll eat something and then hurrah for that 
coop. There wasn’t much frost in the ground 
when this last snow came. I can make the 
holes with a crowbar.” 

He had already been at work out-of-doors and 
at the barn with a lantern. Now, as soon as he 
had swallowed his boiled eggs and a cup of hot 
coffee, he got the crowbar and went out to what 
he called “the hen lot,” beyond the cattle shed 
that was turning into a great hen coop. He 
seemed to have forgotten that he was lame or 
sore, anywhere, and he moved rapidly. There 
was a chilly wind blowing, but he did not seem 
to know it. 


HOW GID OCCUPIED THE HEN-FORT. 47 


“If I can’t make the holes, I’ll be as mad 
as a wet hen ! ” he exclaimed, as he struck his 
crowbar into the ground, after measuring a line 
across the lot. 

“ Hurrah ! It’s gone through ! ” he shouted. 
“ Now, if I don’t work ! ” 

The sun had previously done some work for 
him upon that piece of ground, but then cattle- 
yard muck, with a little snow to cover it, does 
not freeze hard, like other ground, and it protects 
the ground under iti^That stock lot had never 
been cleared out since the first drove of cattle 
was turned into it. Hay, straw, cornstalks, all 
sorts of fodder, had been trampled down there, 
summer and winter, to make it deep, deep, deep, 
with a compost of which Gid Granger did not 
yet know the value, but he would, one day. All 
he knew was that it was easy to make holes in 
it, in spite of the frost, and to stick up old fence- 
rails in those holes, one lath-length apart. There 
was a great heap of old rails, back of the barn, 
and before five o’clock he had two rows of them 


48 HOW GID OCCUPIED THE HEN-FORT. 

stuck up, clean across the hen-lot, so that they 
were ready for the laths that would fence in two 
complete coops. 

“ It’ll take a whole bundle of ’em,” said Gid to 
himself. “ Maybe more. I mustn’t hammer or 
they’ll hear me at the house. It’s ’most time to 
go in, but I can punch a few more rail-holes.” 

If he had been in the house a few minutes 
earlier he might have seen and heard something. 
Mrs. Granger was an early riser. Year after 
year she had been accustomed to be the first 
person up in that dwelling. This morning she 
awoke as usual and she was nearly dressed 
before she awoke her husband. Then she went 
to call Gid, but he did not answer her. 

“ Gid ! Gideon ! ” she repeated. “ He had 
a tough time yesterday. He was dreadfully 
tired last night. He’s a-sleepin’ like a log. 
I’ll just let him sleep another hour. He’ll have 
enough to do when he gets up, but he’ll have to 
fix that there coop some other day. His father 
wants him.” Her next visit was to Marian’s 


HOW GID OCCUPIED THE HEN-FORT. 49 

room. “Get up, Mattie! Get up!” she said 
sharply. “Don’t wake Gid. He was dreadful 
tired last night. You come right down, quick 
as you can.” 

That was what she herself did, while Marian 
was murmuring : “ O, dear me ! it can’t be five 
o’clock yet. I wish I lived in the city, where 
they don’t have to get up till they get ready 
to.” 

“Gid! Gid! What does it all mean?” ex- 
claimed Mrs. Granger, as she walked into the 
kitchen. 

Then she walked through the other rooms 
and back again. 

“The boy!” she said. “Why — the boy! 
What is he up to ? ” 

She wrapped a shawl around her and went 
out to the barn to find out and her quick eyes 
told her all about the finished chores. Just as 
Gid turned away from his line of set-up rails he 
heard her calling out to him, over the fence. 

“Gideon! Gideon! Just you come, right 


50 HOW GID OCCUPIED THE HEN-FORT. 

into the house, now. I won’t hev any such 
crazy doings as this. It’ll make you sick, and 
what are you up to ? 

He told her, as he came along, but she hardly 
looked at his line of rails. 

“ You must be a’most froze,” she said, as she 
wrapped her shawl around him and pulled him 
along toward the house. “A-workin’ at them 
things ever sence three o’clock ? Them hens 
o’ yourn ort to lay two eggs apiece a day. That 
coop ” — 

All that he could say could not convince her 
that he had worked off his lameness and was 
feeling first-rate. 

“ Don’t say a word about it to your father,” 
she said, “till after he’s had his breakfast.” 

It was just as well that the story of Gid’s 
mistake about the clock leaked out little by 
little, for old Joshua Granger was in a bad humor. 
He was feeling poor and he had risen with an 
uncommonly low opinion of the prospects of 
the farming season. 


HOW GID OCCUPIED THE HEN-FORT. 5 1 


“Best you can do,” he said, “land will get 
used up and things will go against you. Haulin’ 
is bad. It’s hard times, Maria. We’ll stick to 
every cent we can, anyhow.” 

He felt a little better after he began to eat. 
Gid was not there,* for he had finished a swift 
breakfast and gone back to his work, and his 
mother ventured to tell the story of his early 
rising. 

“ The rails ’ll be just as safe a-standin’ up as 
they would be a-lyin’ down,” she said, “ and it’s 
real plucky of Gid.” 

“I mean to go and see ’em,” said Marian. 

“ So do I,” said her father grimly, and out he 
went, to find Gid punching more holes with his 
crowbar. 

“ That’ll do, Gid,” said old Joshua Granger, 
after watching him for a few moments. “You 
needn’t make a fool of yourself again, getting 
up at three o’clock. I won’t have it. You can’t 
stand it. Use you up for all day.” 

“ I want this job done,” said Gid. 


52 HOW GID OCCUPIED THE HEN-FORT. 

“ Don’t you do it again,” said his father. “ I 
don’t mind the rails, now you’ve got ’em there, 
and you can take what more you want, some 
time. You can stop, now. There’s the wood- 
pile. If you’re so fond of hard work, you can 
saw and split, so you can be free for some other 
work you’ve got to do.” 

Gid dropped his crowbar, glanced longingly 
at his line of ready holes and followed his father. 
He was bitterly disappointed, but the rigid dis- 
cipline discussed between Sergeant Crane and 
his fellow veteran forbade the least sign of 
mutiny. There was to be no nonsense about 
the work indicated, and the quantity of wood 
to be made ready for use was accurately meas- 
ured. Joshua Granger knew how much a boy 
ought to do and was determined that his boy 
should do his whole duty. Not long afterwards 
he got out his buggy and drove away, leaving 
word that he had gone to Hannibal Four Corners 
to try to collect some money that was due him. 

Gid Granger had received his orders in a dead 


HOW GID OCCUPIED THE HEN-FORT. 53 

silence, for his heart was swelling as if one of 
Mart Pepper’s packed snowballs had lit upon 
it — or a bee. His left eye was black and blue 
now, but it had ceased to pain him and his only 
real trouble was about his coop. 

“ It’s too bad ! ” he muttered. “ I could 
a’most have had it done. That’s my stint, is 
it ? I’ll see what I can do ! ” 

A log was on the sawhorse in a twinkling and 
the saw began its tiresome motion. 

“Chestnut,” said Gid. “Cuts like cheese. I 
wish they were all chestnut, or pine, or some- 
thing else that’s soft. Guess there isn’t any 
hickory, this end of the pile.” 

There was hard work enough, but it had 
been measured for a slow boy and not unjustly. 
Nobody could say of Joshua Granger that he 
was an unjust man. In fact, if he had any 
weakness, it was for justice and duty and for 
doing exactly as he said he would, by great and 
small. 

The sticks of wood came in two very rapidly 


54 H 0 W GID OCCUPIED THE HEN-FORT. 

until the sawing was done, and then the axe 
fairly flew and the sticks melted like snow under 
a warm sun. 

“ I’m going to get at that coop,” said Gid to 
himself, every now and then, and he kept his 
word, like his father’s own son. 

“ I’ll stick to putting up rails,” he said, when 
he got to them. “The sooner they’re all up, the 
better. I can’t come out any more, early morn- 
ings, but I guess I know what I can do.” 

Mrs. Granger had looked out at him, now and 
then, while he was sawing and splitting, but she 
went in the sitting-room and sat down to her 
knitting, and Marian was unusually hard at 
work in the milk-room. 

The March wind was blowing sharply, so much 
so that Gid was astonished, a little while before 
dinner-time, to see his sister come running out 
without any hood and with her hair all a-flying. 

“Gid! Gid!” she shouted. “Come into the 
house and see what I’ve been doing. Mother’s 
gone over to old Mrs. Short’s.” 



“if that isn’t old crane!” 



56 


HOW GID OCCUPIED THE HEN-FORT. 


He only pounded away, for a moment, tighten- 
ing one of his rails in its place. 

“ O, come ! Come along,” she exclaimed. 
“ I’ve got something to show you.” 

“ There,” he said. “ I’ll come. There’s one 
more line of rails up and the holes made for 
another. I’ll finish it. you see ’f I don’t, spite 
of everything.” 

He followed her into the house, adding that 
he was quite willing to warm up before dinner, 
but she almost dragged him past the kitchen 
stove, into the milk-room. 

“ There, Gid,” she said, “ look at that.” 

Her face was flushed fiery red and it occurred 
to him that she could look real pretty, sometimes. 
She nodded at something on the table. 

“ It’s nothing but butter,” said Gid, but there 
was a twinkle, even in his half shut up left eye. 

It was really so; nothing but the butter of 
yesterday’s churning, which her mother had 
ordered her to work over properly and get out 
the loose buttermilk. She had worked it, and 


HOW GID OCCUPIED THE HEN-FORT. 57 


worked it, and heaped it up with the butter- 
paddle, and then she had punched it and gouged 
it and smoothed it, this way and that way, and 
now her brother’s eyes danced brighter and 
brighter as he stared at it. 

“You’ve hit it, Mattie,” he exclaimed. “If 
that isn’t old Crane ! You’ve gone and made a 
reg’lar butter-head of him ! ” 


CHAPTER III. 


gid’s big speculation. 

HE butter-head of Sergeant Crane had a 



somewhat exaggerated nose, and the 
whisk of stiff hair on the crown was higher than 
it arose in the original, but both features aided 
the likeness and so did the width and corner 
curves of his mouth. 

Gid and Marian stood looking at it. 

“ Could you do it again ? ” asked Gid. 

“ If it could be chiseled out of a piece of 
marble” — she began, but she was interrupted. 

“ Sakes alive ! ” exclaimed an astonished voice. 
“ It’s the Elder ! Mattie, don’t you ever let me 
ketch you doing a prank of that kind again.” 

“O, mother!” exclaimed Marian, “I didn’t 
know you were here.” 


58 


gid’s big speculation. 


59 


“ It’s a tiptop figger of him,” said Gid. 

“ Don’t care if it is,” said Mrs. Granger. “ I 
had to tell Mrs. Short we hadn’t an egg to lend 
her, and we haven’t, unless it’s Gid’s” — 

“Mother,” said Gid, “ ’bout them ” — 

“ And she said she knew I was mistaken,” 
continued his mother, “for she’d heard ’em 
cackle, and I said I’d come home and see and 
she could come over after dinner.” 

“ She can’t have mine,” said Gid. “ I’ve got 
to have some feed.” 

“ You must have more’n two dozen,” said his 
mother, “ with what I gathered for you this morn- 
ing, and you couldn’t tell her they wasn’t here.” 

“That’s enough for me,” said Gid. “I’ll eat 
my dinner and get out. When she comes, you 
tell her every egg’s gone to the village. She’d 
take ’em and tell me she hadn’t any corn to 
spare, just now.” 

“ Eat your dinner and go, quick,” said Mrs. 
Granger. “Your father’ll be here pretty soon. 
Now, Marian, what did you spile the Elder for? 


6o 


gid’s big speculation. 


I wanted to look at that butter again, to see if 
’twas really like him.” 

It was too late, for Marian had rapidly paddled 
down her piece of shining yellow sculpture. As 
for Gid, dinner was in fact all but ready and he 
was eating anything he could lay his hands on, 
when his father came in. 

Joshua Granger called himself a good farmer 
and believed that he knew how to make crops 
and money. It was a great puzzle to him that 
things went so persistently against him. Not a 
crop that he could remember had been what it 
used to be in good times, but nobody could 
guess when it had been good times with him. 
He came in with a cloud on his face, that day, 
and a shake of his head, in response to a 
questioning look from his wife, meant : 

“No, Maria, I didn’t collect a cent. It’s 
hard times and there’s harder a-coming.” 

He did not say a word aloud, but sat down 
at the dinner table, asked a blessing and began 
to eat. Gid paused while his father asked the 


gid’s big speculation. 


6i 


blessing, but his mouth was full, all the time, 
and he then went on vigorously. 

So, to tell the truth, did his father, as if mis- 
fortune had not injured his appetite. 

When Gid laid down his knife and fork Marian 
arose and went with him to see about the eggs, 
and the moment they were gone Mr. Granger 
spoke. 

“ Maria,” said he, “ not a cent ! I might sell 
some of that wood, though. That is, if the 
haulin’ wasn’t so bad and if I could get it to the 
Valley. There it lies, Maria, where Si Rogers 
left it when he busted. Every tree down more’n 
a year ago, and I’d sell it for a’most nothing.” 

“You can’t haul it, not to the Valley, as the 
roads are now,” said his wife sadly. 

“I’m going over to take a look at it, 'right 
after dinner,” he responded. “ I wish that 
woodlot wasn’t all swamp, Maria. Thirty acres 
of land as good as thrown away. Things are 
lookin’ pretty bad with you and me. Gid and 
Mattie have got to work, these times.” 


62 


gid’s big speculation. 


He swallowed the last of a cup of coffee and 
arose from the table and she began to clear 
away the dishes. He walked out into the back 
yard and a glance at the woodpile told him that 
his orders had been obeyed to the letter. He 
looked around, for a moment, as if he were 
looking for Gid, but there was nobody to be 
seen and he went on to the old cattle-shed, now 
the hennery. 

“Nonsense!” he muttered. “Just look at 
them rails ! He must stop that ” — 

On he walked, however, and disappeared 
beyond the barn, just as Gid and his sled van- 
ished down the road to the village and old Mrs. 
Short came in at the front gate. 

“You don’t say!” she remarked, after she 
got into the house and put her two hundred 
pounds down in a rocking chair. “ Only five 
eggs left to your name ? Well, Maria, with 
what I’ve laid, myself, that makes me a dozen, 
fifteen cents, and coffee’s thirty cents. Half 
pound, and we was just out.” 


gid’s big speculation. 


63 


She had not intended to explain in that way 
her need of eggs, at that time, but sometimes 
old neighbors understand each other fairly well, 
and Mrs. Short’s reputation as a successful bor- 
rower stood high. 

Gid traveled rapidly to the village and to 
Crumb & Corrigan’s to sell his eggs and from 
there to Deacon Johnson’s, for the lumber 
yard and the “ flour and feed store ” were one 
establishment. 

“ Morning, Gid,” said the deacon. “ More 
laths ? How’d you get your black eye ?” 

“Snow ball,” said Gid. “No laths to-day. 
I want half a bushel of corn for my hens.” 

“ I saw ’em pelting you,” said the deacon. 
“Got it hard, did you? What I want is a coop 
for mine. Don’t know what I bought ’em for 
unless ’cause they were going cheap as dirt” — 

“ I’ve got coop enough, soon’s I can get laths 
to finish it,” said Gid. “ To-morrow or next day.” 

“Take ’em right along,” said the deacon 
heartily. “Four bundles? Your credit’s good. 


64 


gid’s big speculation. 


Tell you what, though, Gid — can’t you take 
my hens ? I always get stuck if I see an 
auction. Sixteen hens and two roosters, best 
kind, Poland top-knots, whole lot for ten cel- 
lars, and they’re worth a dollar a head.” 

“ I got mine ” — began Gid again. 

“I heard it, I heard it,” said the deacon. 
“ Old Quick always lets the last lot go for 
nothing. I ought to have waited. Come and 
get ’em to-night, and put ’em in your coop. All 
I want is my ten dollars back again. They’d 
fetch that by weight, if I had time to see to it. 
Take your laths now, Gid ? ” 

“ Well, yes,” said Gid, “ I’ll do that. I can 
pay right along.” 

He went out to the lumber-yard with his 
sled, while Deacon Johnson was going for the 
corn, and so he did not hear that good man 
say to his clerk : 

“ Glad to get rid of ’em. I’m afraid some of 
’em won’t turn up. We’ll hunt for ’em, though. 
Better let him have ’em than lose ’em. One 


gid’s big speculation. 65 

night of ’em in the seed-room’s ’bout all I care 
for.” 

He had a reason for his haste to sell, there- 
fore, if he had had none for his haste to buy, 
and Gid Granger was to be plunged deeper and 
deeper into the hen business. 

“Don’t know what father’ll say ’bout it,” said 
Gid, as he lifted down bundle after bundle 
of laths. “ No chance to ask him. He isn’t 
here.” 

Nobody but himself knew where Joshua 
Granger was, at that moment, or what he was 
looking at. His walk across his own farm had 
carried him to a seemingly very dismal bit of 
scenery. 

“ Swamp,” he said, as he stared at it. “’Bout 
ten acres of it was pretty heavy timber. Ten 
more was thin. Ten of it was just swamp. 
What got into Si Rogers to cut down all the 
trees before he chopped and hauled one of ’em, 
beats me. Guess it was rum. That’s what 
spiled Si,” 


66 


gid’s big speculation. 


Dry and bare lay the dead trunks, lifting 
up their naked, skeleton branches, and they 
made it look like a desolation as well as a lost 
speculation. “ No market. No haulin’. No 
nothing,” groaned Mr. Granger. “ Soon as Gid 
gets back I must set him at work.” 

Gid was standing at that moment by the 
piles of lumber at Deacon Johnson’s yard and 
near him two men were talking. 

“ Dr. Hotchkiss,” exclaimed one of them 
almost angrily, “ I relied on you for that. I 
wasn’t here. We can’t run brick kilns with- 
out firewood, no matter how good the clay is. 
Five dollars a cord, and nobody’ll haul it in 
now? Green wood, too ? It’s ruin ! We want 
hundreds of cords ! ” 

The doctor’s usually placid face was a little 
flushed, and his reply told Gid a great deal. 
There was a reasbn for his giving up the poultry 
business. He owned acres of clay, and Farrell, 
as he called the other man, was evidently a 
brick maker. 


gid’s big speculation. 


67 


“ Doctor,” said Gid. 

“Hullo, Gideon,” replied the doctor. “You 
got those hens for nothing, almost.” 

“ Do you and he want some cord wood ? ” 
asked Gid.” 

“ Got any ? ” exclaimed Farrell sharply. “ Is 
it seasoned, or green ? ” 

“ Seasoned,” said Gid. “ No end of it. All 
down, too, only it isn’t cut or hauled. You’d 
have to haul it yourself, mile and a quarter.” 

“ Hurrah ! Hotchkiss, if that’s so” — 

“His head’s level,” said the doctor. “Bid 
off my chickens ” — 

“ Never mind the chickens,” said Farrell ex- 
citedly. “We’ll pay cash down, three dollars 
a cord, chop and haul it ourselves.” 

“All right,” said Gid, with a hot, fierce, 
feverish thrill all over him. “ I’ll sell you two 
hundred cords, at that figure. I’m coming here 
again, after supper. Tell you all about it then.” 

“Can’t you tell us now? We could go and 
finish the bargain,” said Farrell. 


68 


gid’s big speculation. 


“You’re only a boy,” said Dr. Hotchkiss. 

“ I’ll bring a man with me, then,” said Gid. 
“ He isn’t here now, so I won’t say any more.” 

“You’re right ’bout that,” replied Mr. Farrell. 
“ Three dollars a cord ? ” 

“Just as you put it,” said Gid, and he really 
could not have said any more, just then. He 
put his four bundles of laths on the sled and 
hauled them away towards the street. He was 
passing the door of the small frame building 
where Deacon Johnson kept his stock of all 
sorts of seed-grain when he was halted by a 
tremendous fluttering and squawking, inside. 

“Hold him, Jim ! ” shouted the voice of the 
deacon. “ I’ve got the other rooster. They’ve 
eat up every kernel of that new Early Wonder. 
Two dollars a peck for hen-feed ! Tie him 
up ! Gid’s got to take ’em right away.” 

Out came the deacon, very red in the face, 
with a pair of squawking, leg-tied fowls, in each 
hand, and Jim followed him, laden in the same 
way. 


gid’s big SPECULATION. • 


69 


“ Tie ’em down on the laths, Gid,” said the 
deacon. “'Twon’t hurt ’em. If the seeds 
they’ve swallowed sprouted in ’em, you’d have 
a garden.” 

“ Put ’em on,” said Gid. “ I’ll take ’em along. 
Hope the boys won't pelt me to-day, though.” 

“ Guess they won’t ! ” exclaimed Jim. “ You’re 
safe.” 

How that could be was not clear to Gid 
until he pulled his now heavy cargo out into 
the street and found himself face to face with 
Mart Pepper. 

“ Hullo, Gid,” said Mart. “ What an eye ! ” 

“ Hullo,” replied Gid. “ What’s your head 
done up for?” 

“ It’s all swelled on that side,” said Mart, as 
if he spoke with some difficulty. “ Did you put 
a chunk of ice into that ball ? I did into mine. 
Must have hurt, too. Yours did.” 

“Nothin’ but slush,” said Gid, “but it packed 
first-rate.” 

“Pelt Ogden’s mouth looks like two sassages. 


70 


gid’s big speculation. 


That’s where you got him,” said Mart; “but 
there won’t be any more snowballing.” 

“ Won’t there ? ” asked Gid. “ The snow isn’t 
all gone.” 

“ There’s two panes of glass gone in Widder 
Crocker’s parlor winder, and three in the 
’Cad’my, and some in the Methodist meetin’ 
’us,” said Mart dolefully, “ and they’re countin’ 
up all the smashed glass there is in the village 
and a-sayin’ that we boys did it.” 

“That’s too bad, Mart,” said Gid. “ Spoilin’ 
all our fun. Does your ear ache ? ” 

“Guess it does,” said Mart, “ but I never saw 
snow pack better.” 

“ It just did,” said Gid. “ I’ve got to come 
back, to-night, for more chickens.” 

“ I’ll help you pull your load till you get 
out to where there’s more snow. Old Judge 
Hopper’s tryin’ to find out who fired the ball 
that took off his new Sunday hat.” 

“ Spile it ? ” asked Gid, as they tugged along, 
side by side. 


gid’s big speculation. 


71 


“ Bill Miller’s dog got it first, and that there 
’Foundland pup of Rogers’s, he got hold, and 
he carried the brim of it clean home with him. 
There isn’t a boy in this village that’ll peach.” 

“You and I are even, anyhow,” said Gid. 
“ And Pelt Ogden always did have more mouth’n 
he needed.” 

There had been no malice in the snowballing 
business, but it had made more disturbance in 
the village than Mart could tell at once, and the 
sled was half-way home before he turned back. 

When Gid reached the house, he hauled his 
cargo back to the cattle-shed without letting 
anybody see it. The end coop was already 
complete and he could shut up his feathered 
purchases. They would have no land to run 
about on until he should find time to put his 
laths upon his upright rails and make a hen- 
fence of them. 

“Ten hens that I bought yesterday,” he said, 
as he set the Poland top-knots free in their new 
homes, “a dozen that I had before, and two 


72 


gid’s big speculation. 


that mother gave me, and these sixteen, make 
forty hens and four roosters. It’ll take a heap 
of corn to feed ’em, but then corn’s cheaper 
feed than garden seeds. How they must have 
scattered that onion seed! The deacon said 
they made it fly.” 

The corn was put away in the other end of the 
cattle-shed and Gid went to the house and the 
nearer he got to it the hotter and queerer he felt. 

“I’ve got to see father,” he said, several 
times, and each time he added, “and what 
he’ll say or do, I don’t know.” 

Either his feet were heavy or he was carrying 
a heavy load that could not be seen, when he 
slowly walked into the sitting-room. 

“ Did you get your corn ? ” asked his mother. 

“Yes, I got it,” he said, and then he turned 
suddenly to his father, sitting by the fire, 
bent over and staring gloomily into the blaze. 
“Father,” he blurted out, “I wish you’d sell 
me all the trees that are cut down, ready to 
chop, out in the swamp-lot.” 




MAKES AN ASTONISHING PROPOSAL 































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gid’s big speculation. 


75 


“ I’d rather sell ’em to somebody that can 
pay for ’em,” said his father, with a grim, dis- 
contented smile. “ What do you mean ?” 

“ I’ll give a dollar’n a half a cord for all you’ve 
got, right on the ground where it lies,” said Gid, 
while all the blood in his body seemed to him 
to be boiling, in spite of a great effort that he 
was making to keep cool. 

“ Gid,” said his father, as if putting away an 
annoyance, “I don’t feel like being bothered, 
just now.” 

“ What do you mean, Gid ? ” asked Marian, 
from the other side of the room. “You can’t 
buy any wood.” 

“ Joshua,” said Mrs. Granger, after a very 
sharp glance at her son, “ there’s something on 
his mind. Tell him what you’ll do.” 

“ Nothing,” said her husband. “ He can’t do 
any thing, either. Wood’s five dollars a cord.” 

“Cut and hauled and wait for your money 
till you get it,” said Gid. “ Will you take two 
dollars a cord, just as it lies ? ” 


76 


gid’s big speculation. 


“ Oh ! don’t bother me,” said his father, in a 
tone of much irritation. “Two dollars? Cash? 
Of course I will. I’d clear out the lot.” 

Gid was silent for a few seconds and it made 
them all turn and look very hard at him. His 
mother thought he looked pale. 

“ You’ll be entirely satisfied,” he asked, “ if I 
pay you two dollars a cord ? ” 

“ Perfectly satisfied, Gid,” said Mr. Granger, 
with an evident increase of interest in the con- 
versation. “ Perfectly ! ” 

“ Then if I make any more, in the trade, will 
it be my money?” asked Gid, with a thump- 
thumping at his heart. 

“ So I get my pay, I don’t care how much 
more you get,” said his father, and he stood 
straight up as he said it. 

“ Mother,” whispered Marian excitedly, “ Gid’s 
got something ! I know he has.” 

“Gideon,” exclaimed his mother, “speak it 
out. What on earth are you up to ? ” 

“ Why, mother,” said he, “ I want father to 


gid’s big speculation. 


77 


go to the village with me, after supper. I’ve 
sold every stick of that wood, to Farrell and 
Hotchkiss, for three dollars a cord, to burn in 
their brick-kilns, all through the spring and 
summer till snow comes again.” 

“You don’t say ! ” almost groaned old Joshua 
Granger. “ Made a dollar a cord, right straight 
along. It’s all good enough for them, Gid. I 
was over there, to-day. But there’s lots of it 
that wouldn’t do for first-class cord wood. 

“ Hurrah for Gid ! ” shouted Marian. 

“ Gideon,” said his mother, “ if I ain’t just 
proud of you ! I guess you don’t need to go to 
school any more.” 

While she and Marian and Gid were saying 
some other things that they' felt like saying, 
Joshua Granger walked out of the room and 
through the kitchen and stood on the back stoop 
for a while, as if he were thinking very hard. 

“ Two hundred dollars clean profit, and may 
be twice as much, right out of me,” he muttered. 
“ Too much money for a boy of his age. Ruin 


7 8 


gid’s big speculation. 


him. I’ll just lock it up, fast as it comes in, and 
keep it for him.” 

“ Yes, father, but ain’t you just proud of 
him ? ” asked an excited voice behind him. 
“ He’s been telling me all about it.” 

“ Maria,” exclaimed her husband, “ I never 
went back on any promise I ever made. I’ll 
do as I said I would. He’s never been spiled 
with schoolin’, Maria.” 

“ You go out and look at his coop.” 

That was the very thing that Joshua Granger 
had in his mind to do, and when Gid came out 
he found his father with the crowbar in his 
powerful hands, rapidly making holes for rails 
to be stuck into, along the next line of parti- 
tion. It was as if he were getting excited. 

“ Father,” said Gid, “ what are you going to 
do with the stock-lot, there, this year?” 

“Nothin’ at all, I guess. It hasn’t been 
plowed for five year. There’s more’n twelve 
acres of it, lyin’ idle. There’s more land than 
I can work, besides that.” 


gid’s big speculation. 


79 


“ Do you want to rent it ? ” asked Gid. “ If 
you do, put a price on it.” 

“ Nobody ’round here wants it,” said his father. 
“ Anybody that does can pay me five dollars an 
acre, say sixty dollars in all, when they take 
off their crop. Do you know of anybody that 
wants it?” 

“ Can’t tell yet,” said Gid. “ What’ll you take 
for all the manure on that side of the barn yard, 
run a line through the middle?” 

“ Hundred dollars,” said his father. 

“ May I have all I can make over those two 
prices ? ” asked Gid. 

“ Every cent,” said his father. “ You won’t 
make anything, but if you do I’ll take care of it 
for you. You’re going to work, this year, Gid.” 

Gid’s face had a flush on it but he did not say 
anything. There was a swollen-hearted, rebel- 
lious feeling creeping over him, and he could 
not give himself any good reason for it. He 
picked up his hammer and some nails and began 
to nail laths upon his first line of partition, and 


8o 


gid’s big speculation. 


it seemed to do him good. Joshua Granger 
himself did not recover from the first effects 
of his son's bargain for the wood until he had 
brought four big shoulder-loads of old rails and 
had thrown them down along the next line of 
holes. 

“ Wish I had a man to help me all the while,” 
said Gid, as his father walked away. “I’m get- 
ting this coop into shape mighty fast, any how. 
I’ll have four coops and four pens finished as 
quick as I can, so I can keep the flocks sepa- 
rated. Hear ’em cackle ! ” 

Joshua Granger and his son had to get their 
own supper, that evening, for Marian and her 
mother had gone to the village to the sewing 
society, at old Judge Hopper’s. Then the house 
was locked up and there was a very silent sort 
of walk to the village and to Deacon Johnson’s 
office and Dr. Hotchkiss did all the talking that 
was required during the closing up of the con- 
tract for the wood. He and Farrell were going 
to make a fortune out of bricks, he said, now 


gid’s big speculation. 


8i 


they were sure of firewood, and Mr. Farrell 
made a written note of the fact that one dollar 
on every cord was to be Gid’s money. 

Gid saw his father’s eyes snap, a little, when 
he told them that, and he heard him say, in an 
undertone, to Deacon Johnson, “he hasn’t been 
spiled by no books or papers or schoolin’.” 

Gid was not expected to go with his father 
to the sewing society, but there was something 
more in store for him. Not in any store in the 
village, but at the house of Dr. Hotchkiss. 

“Come right along, Gid,” said the placid 
man of many speculations. “ Bring your sled. 
Hope you’ll make more out of poultry than I 
did. Them Poland top-knots are awful egg- 
layers. Tell ye what, Gid, I bought more books 
and I subscribed for more papers — hen books 
and farm books and hen papers and farm papers. 
Don’t want ’em in the brick business. Had to 
pay for ’em all, too. Let you have the whole lot 
for ten dollars and count it in on wood. Come, 
now, Gid, you got them Plymouth Rocks for most 


82 


gid’s big speculation. 


nothing. What do I want of hen books? I’m 
going to get some on pottery, though, and I’m 
going to subscribe — well, I’ve done it — for two 
papers on building and two on — well, on general 
subjects. You’ll give ten dollars for the lot ? 
Do you good to know something.” 

He talked so steadily that Gid had no chance 
to say anything in particular. In fact, Gid felt 
very much as if he were dreaming and the first 
thing he knew, for certain, there was a pretty 
heavy package put down upon the sled, among 
the tied-up hens, and he heard Dr. Hotchkiss 
say: 

“Good-night, Gid. I’ll write and have ’em 
change them papers to your address. I don’t 
want to see a hen book, or a hen paper, or 
a farm book, or a farm paper, ever again. 
They’ve made me lose more money ! Good- 
night, Gid ! ” 

“ That’s about what father’d say,” said Gid, 
as he hauled his load away. “ But I’m kind o’ 
glad I’ve got ’em.” 


CHAPTER IV. 


Marian’s very long evening. 

HERE were all sorts of people at the Sew- 



-*• ing Society at Judge Hopper’s that even- 
ing. The afternoon had been given to charita- 
ble needlework, especially to quilts, knitting, and 
the dressing up of dolls for sale at the great 
Union Fair, of all the churches in Genentaha 
Hill, which was to be held in a week or so. 
They had tried to hold it during the Christmas 
holidays, but every church had had too much 
charity of its own to do at that time, and Mrs. 
Crocker said that they were going to club to- 
gether now and make everybody buy every- 
thing that was left over. Pelt Ogden had said 
that every girl around the Hill had half a dozen 
dolls ailready ; but, then, he always did talk too 


84 Marian’s very long evening. 

much. He was not to be there that evening, 
partly on account of the condition of his mouth, 
and partly because he was not old enough, and 
Judge Hopper was understood to be particularly 
down on boys just then. Boys and dogs. They 
had cost him the best fitting hat he had ever 
bought, and he had paid six dollars for it. 

Even the older boys, old enough to go to 
college, or to go a sleigh-riding, or to see any- 
body home, were not expected until after 
supper. 

All through the afternoon the lady part of 
the company kept coming in, and those who 
got there just in time for supper all gave good 
reasons for not being there earlier. The girls 
who came just after supper had had to remain 
at home, so that their mothers and aunts could 
come, as a rule. 

It was not a great while after supper when 
fat old Mrs. Hopper got hold of Marian for the 
first time. 

“Mattie, my dear — puff,” said she, “I’ve 


Marian’s very long evening. 85 

been wanting to — puff — speak to you. Why 
didn’t you bring your — puff — brother ? He’s 
the only — puff — boy in the village that the 
judge takes any interest in.” 

“Why, .Mrs. Hopper,” said Marian, “Gid has 
got the most awful black eye ” — 

“ Those dreadful — puff — boys ! The judge 
saw ’em. They’d have ’most killed him. He 
didn’t lose his — puff — hat, did he?” 

“ O, no ! ” said Marian, “ but his eye ” — 

“ His poor eye ! ” exclaimed Mrs. Hopper. 
“ And they say Martin Pepper’s ear and Pelt 
Ogden’s — puff — mouth. O, dear! Do you 
play the piano ? ” 

“ Why, no, Mrs. Hopper,” replied Marian, in 
some amazement, “I never took lessons” — 

“ But I’ve heard you sing in the choir,” said 
M^rs. Hopper. “ My — puff — niece, Jenny 
Trumbull, is here from the city, and she isn’t 
nearly so tall as you are, and she gives — puff 
— lessons in music. She draws, too, and 
paints ” — 


86 


Marian’s very long evening. 


Just then a slight, brown-haired girl was yield- 
ing to two young gentlemen and three young 
ladies, and one old gentleman and two old 
ladies who were urging her to sit down upon 
the piano-stool. 

“There she is,” said Mrs. Hopper. “I can’t 
tell one note from another, my — puff — self, 
but they say she can ” — 

A warm flush rose to brighten Marian’s clear 
dark complexion as she heard the first chords 
called out by Jenny Trumbull’s touch upon the 
keys of that piano. 

“ It’s something like a miracle,” she said to 
herself. “ How can she do it ! She must be 
older than she looks.” 

That was true enough, but it was also true 
that Jenny had been trained for a musician from 
her very childhood, so that she was now a very 
fair mistress of the trade she lived by. 

Slowly, without any will or intent of her own, 
Marian found herself drawn nearer and nearer 
to the piano. She seemed to be under the spell 


Marian’s very long evening. 87 

of some sudden fascination. Never before had 
she heard a piano really well played. 

A heap of sheet music lay upon the stand at t 
the end of the instrument, and a tall, flaxen- 
haired, yellow-moustached young man was turn- 
ing it over. He was looking at one of the sheets 
when a voice at his elbow exclaimed : 

“ There, Rube Thompson, I’ve heard you 
sing that. Mattie Granger can take the air, 
you can sing the tenor.” 

Other voices cut her short, right there, by 
eagerly helping her, for Miss Trumbull’s fingers 
had paused at the end of her very good per* 
formance, and Rube Thompson was almost 
compelled to say: “Well, Mrs. Crocker, if Mr. 
Crumb will take the bass, and if Miss Trum- 
bull ” — 

“ Certainly,” she quietly assented. 

“ Miss Trumbull — Miss Granger,” said Rube, 
by way of introduction, and Marian found her- 
self, with a tingle wandering over her from head 
to foot, an elected member of that quartette. 


88 Marian’s very long evening. 

If a girl can sing better with her heart in her 
throat and all the world gone from her except 
the black music notes on a sheet of paper, then 
she was in splendid condition to sing. 

“ Who can that be ! ” exclaimed Mrs. Granger 
to her husband in the back parlor a few seconds 
later. “ Seems to me I’ve heerd that voice be- 
fore, but I haven’t. There isn’t any girl ’round 
the Hill that can come up to that. Did Mrs. 
Hopper hev two nieces a-visitin’ her? ” 

“Guess so,” said Joshua Granger. “It’s all 
nonsense, anyhow. But just isn’t that fine” — 

“ Nonsense, is it ? ” snapped his wife. “ That 
Trumbull girl made more clean money last year 
than you did. She sold one picter for fifty 
dollars, and she didn’t half try, she had so much 
music to teach.” 

“ I s’pose it does pay in the city,” said he, 
“but — I say, Maria, that there is Mattie ! She 
and Miss Trumbull and old Crumb and Rube 
Thompson ! ” 

“ I do declare ! ” replied Mrs. Granger. 


Marian’s very long evening. 89 

Not another word came from either of them 
until the voices of the quartette died away amid 
a general clapping of hands. 

“ Are they goin-’ to sing again ? ” said Mr. 
Granger. “ She can’t do it twice, a hand 
runnin’ ” — 

Miss Jenny Trumbull may or she may not 
have thought the same, but she arose from the 
piano and Rube Thompson found her hand on 
his arm as she insisted upon walking away. 
He had intended to say something or other to 
Marian ; so had Mr. Crumb, so had Mrs. Crocker, 
so had several others ; and she did not exactly 
know how she had slipped away without giving 
either of them an opportunity. 

“ Where has she gone ? ” exclaimed Miss 
Trumbull. “ Mr. Thompson, I do so wish to 
see that girl. Not one of my pupils has such a 
voice. Do find her for me.” 

That was just what he wanted to do, but he 
went in the wrong direction. Marian’s feet had 
carried her away from the piano, out of the par- 


90 Marian’s very long evening. ' 

lor, across the hall and into Judge Hopper’s 
library, before they were satisfied that she had 
perfectly escaped. 

The house itself was one of the most spacious 
in the village, the very place for holding a sew- 
ing society as everybody said, and it was fur- 
nished well. The old judge was a bookish man, 
and he had been the victim of book-agents dur- 
ing more than a quarter of a century. Neither 
he nor any other man knew exactly what he had 
in that library, but the very look of it gave him 
a wide reputation for learning. Any client he 
had was willing to allow him bigger fees after 
sitting down by the long table in the middle of 
the room and gazing at the backs of the books 
on all those shelves. 

Marian Granger dropped into a chair by that 
table, but she did not look around her. Her 
mother would have said that she looked flus- 
tered, and perhaps she was so, but she did not 
say a word, and anybody looking into her mind 
and reading her thoughts would have reported 


Marian’s very long evening. 


9 1 


that these were not in any kind of shape for 
speaking them or printing them. The fact was, 
that in all that house there was not one person 
more astonished by Marian Granger’s singing 
than was Marian herself, and she, moreover, was 
the only person at all scared by it. She was so 
frightened that she bent over the table and pre- 
tended to be examining an open portfolio of 
drawings that lay there. 

It was one that Jenny Trumbull had brought 
with her to show to her aunt, and that she might 
touch up some of them during her visit. Near 
it, on the table, lay a case of crayons. 

Marian had seen a few engrayings, some of 
them pretty good, a number of specimens of rural 
pencil work, any number of photographs of all 
sorts, but never a good painting or a first-rate 
crayon sketch. Here were some capital sketches, 
and she found them helping her to be less flus- 
tered about her singing. Then they looked 
up at her with a more and more friendly expres- 
sion, and one of them in particular seemed to 


92 


Marian’s very long evening. 


claim acquaintance. It was an outline head of 
a grim, long-nosed, hard-featured old man, who 
might have been a soldier, or a preacher, an 

f 

orderly sergeant or an elder. There was a blank 
sheet of drawing-paper handy and Marian’s 
fingers took it up and put it before her and then 
they took up a crayon. 

Nobody knows what one’s feet and fingers 
can do until an opportunity is given them and 
they are allowed to have their own way. The 
fingers of Marian’s right hand were as self- 
willed and independent as her feet had been, 
and her ears joined in the matter, for the sound 
of steps behind her was all unheard. 

“It was never meant for Elder Crane,” mut- 
tered Marian, “ but I’ve made it look twice as 
much like him ” — 

“ Oh ! dear me. Oh ! my dear. How I wish 
I had your hand and eyes. Your wonderful 
natural gift. Who did you have for a teacher 
out here ? ” 

“Why, Miss Trumbull, what have I been do- 


Marian’s very long evening. 


93 


ing ? I didn’t stop to think,” exclaimed Marian, 
blushing painfully. “ I just did it, I never had 
a lesson from anybody ” — 

“Never a lesson?” interrupted Miss Trum- 
bull. “ Oh ! dear me, I’ve got to go home to- 
morrow. May I take that with me ? Give it 
to me, please.” 

“ Why, it’s yours,” said Marian. “ I’ve spoiled 
your paper for you” — 

“Do sit down,” said Miss Trumbull, for 
Marian had risen, “ I must talk with you.” 

Marian did not find the right word to say, 
but she sat down and she answered Jenny 
Trumbull’s questions as well as she could, and 
very much better than she was aware of. She 
learned that Jenny was only three years older - 
than herself, which was hard to believe, and it 
was all a great deal like a dream until Rube 
Thompson came in somewhat hastily, remarking : 

“ She must have gone home ” — 

“No, she hasn’t,” said Miss Trumbull. “ Here 
she is, and I mustn’t stay here any longer. 


94 


Marian’s very long evening. 


Marian, dear,” she added, with a touch of en- 
thusiasm that made her look very pretty, “I 
must have another chat with you, by and by.” 

“ But I won’t try to sing again,” said Marian, 
positively. “ Not on any account, whatever.” 

“ I won’t ask you,” said Miss Trumbull, “ and 
I don’t mean to play any more unless Aunt 
Hopper insists upon it. I must go and see her, 
though.” 

That left Rube Thompson in such a condition 
of mind that the only thing near his mouth to 
say was : “ I did think you had run away and 
gone home, Mattie. You sang splendidly.” 

“ I was so frightened,” said Marian. “ I 
really did wish I was at home.” 

“ I was afraid you had gone without company, 
too,” said Rube, “and I was going to say — 
that is — if nobody else — if I — I’d be de- 
lighted, you know ” — 

“ Such a long walk,” she said. 

“ O, no ! — I’m fond of walking — I — why, 
it’s no walk at all. Very fine moonlight too.” 


Marian’s very long evening. 


95 


Marian was afterward aware that she must 
have told Rube that he could see her home, for 
he actually did so, and it was not until they 
were out of Judge Hopper’s house that she was 
also aware how mistaken he had been about 
the moon. Only stars had been provided for 
that night, and not a great many of them. 
She remembered what he had said, but her 
greatest regret was, after all, that during the 
entire remainder of that evening there had been 
no opportunity for another talk with Jenny 
Trumbull. She said as much to him just as 
they came through Judge Hopper’s gate, and 
it was very much as if she had lost her tongue 
in saying it, so that it was well for both of 
them that he had by no means lost his own. 

The fact was that her thoughts had walked 
away ahead of her and were busy with the farm- 
house to which he was escorting her. Her 
mind gave her pictures of every room in it, and 
of all that was in that room, and it insisted on 
comparing them all with the rooms in which 


g 6 marian’s very long evening. 

she had spent the evening. She had no sus- 
picion that any change had come to her or that 
there were any small signs of other improve- 
ments coming to the house. She knew that Gid 
was there, all alone, and that was all. 

He was there. He had tugged home his 
sled-load of hens and literature with a queer 
feeling growing in him all the way. When he 
reached the house he went and put his new 
purchases into the coop. 

“ I must get the old cow-house divided up 
and the lots fenced in as soon as I can,” he 
said. “ I'll do it, somehow, and have it all 
ready before they begin to set.” 

Then he walked to the house almost as if he 
did not wish to go, but it was really because his 
mind felt as if it were loading up with some- 
thing very heavy. It was the load of his new 
responsibilities and it struck him that he had 
not until then been aware how small a boy, 
and how young a boy and how ignorant a boy 
he was. 


Marian’s very long evening. 


97 


“ I don’t know anything,” he said to himself 
aloud. “ I’ve never been anywhere, I’ve never 
seen anything and I don’t know how to do any- 
thing.” 

It might be so, but he was half an inch taller 
than any other boy of his age around the Hill, 
and he was building an uncommonly good and 
large hen-coop. That was nothing ? Well, 
there are boys who haven’t enough in them to 
make a hen-coop, not if there are piles of old 
rails to be had and plenty of laths and nails. 

Gid went on into the sitting-room and lighted 
the big lamp on the center table, and lifted his 
heavy package of books into the light of it. 
Then he cut the string, for Dr. Hotchkiss'had 
knotted it as if he had been a sailor. He must 
indeed have been sick of anything about hens 
or farming. 

“ There’s a big hen book and a little hen 
book,” said Gid. “What’s this? ‘All about 
farming?’ That’s what father hates. Well, it’s 
mine, now. Guess it won’t hurt me.” 


98 Marian’s very long evening. 

It was big enough and it had in it any num- 
ber of pictures, large and small, but Gid put 





GID AND HIS HEN BOOKS. 


it aside to pick up another book that had 
been thrown in with the rest, and a lot of 
pamphlets. 


Marian’s very long evening. 


99 


“ That's a kind of farm-book, too," he said. 
“A whopper. What's this ? Just a kind of list.” 

That was what it was, a pamphlet as thick as 
his finger, a list of all the books printed by one 
great house in the city, and with it were two 
thinner lists of the books printed by two other 
houses, and with these were the annual cata- 
logues of three colleges. 

“ I wouldn’t have believed it," said Gid to 
himself. “ A fellow couldn’t read all of those 
books if he dropped everything else and gave 
his time to it." Still it took him half an hour 
to get away from those pamphlets and back to 
his hen-books and farm-books. 

“They busted Dr. Hotchkiss," said Gid, 
“ and father says they’d break up any farmer." 

It might be so, but he could not get away 
from them, and he forgot all about the sewing 
society. Early in the day he had half wanted 
to go, and told Marian she was only a year and 
a half older than he was, for telling him that he 
was only a boy yet. 


IOO 


MARIAN S VERY LONG EVENING. 


The evening slipped away, and the sitting- 
room fire was allowed to burn so low that Gid 
had only time to get it well a-going again before 
there was a stamping and scraping at the front 
door and his father and mother came in. They 
did not find Gid in the sitting-room. The mo- 
ment he heard the first sound of their coming 
he gathered his new treasures as if he were 
afraid that somebody might steal them from 
him and hurried them up to his own room. 

“ It won’t do to let father see these books,” 
he exclaimed. “Not just yet. But I know 
what I’m going to do. I won’t even tell Mattie 
all I’m up to. She could read ’em if she 
wanted to, but I guess she wouldn’t care much 
for such reading.” 

He fixed the fire in his own stove and sat 
down by it, with an idea that he and Judge 
Hopper and some other men had libraries. 


CHAPTER V. 


GID GRANGER’S NEW IDEAS. 

O LD Joshua Granger did a great deal of 
grumbling between Judge Hopper’s gate 
and his own. Just as he reached the latter he 
said to Mrs. Granger: 

“ Maria, Mattie mustn’t get set up.” 
“Joshua,” said she, “ she isn’t a-goin’ to, and 
I’ll see that she isn’t sp’iled.” 

“There’s all sorts of nonsense, nowadays,” 
he responded. “ She doesn’t need to sing any 
better’n she does now. As for that there tow- 
headed young lawyer and Deacon Crumb ” — 

“ Father,” interrupted Mrs. Granger, with her 
hand on the gate, “ they all said she sang 
splendidly, and she looks two years older’n 
she is.” 


ioi 


102 


GID GRANGER’S NEW IDEAS. 


“ She’s got to be kep’ at home,” growled he, 
as they went in. “ So’s Gid. I won’t have any 
nonsense ’round here. Chickens ! Coops ! 
Sewin’ Societies ” — 

“ Father,” said Mrs. Granger, “Gid sold that 
wood.” 

“ Made a dollar a cord out of me a-doitt’ it, 
too. Sharp as a razor,” said he almost cheer- 
fully. “ I won’t say but what Gid’s a-beginnin’ 
to wake up a little. Now, Maria, I don’t mind 
that. He’ll know how to drive a bargain and 
git a livin’ for himself, one of these days.” 

“ Marian’s a-learnin’ how to work,” she said, 
“ and it’s real good she can sing.” 

“ I’ll take keer of Gid’s money for him, when 
it comes in,” he remarked. “ He’s too young 
to be ’lowed to lay a-hold of it. It’d all go, on 
chickens, or something.” 

They were in the house by that time, and the 
door was closed behind them and they had no 
idea whatever of finding Gid downstairs or out 
of bed. All they had to do was to find their 


GID GRANGER’S NEW IDEAS. 


103 


way to their own room, finishing, as they went, 
and afterwards, their very mixed and disjointed 
discussion of their own prospects and of the 
right way of bringing up children such as theirs. 

During all that time, away back behind them, 
coming up the road from the village, in the star- 
ligh^ was a girl who had forgotten how to talk, 
and a boy of about twenty-three who had 
taken up the duty of talking for two. When 
they reached the gate, she found tongue enough 
to tell him how sorry she felt for a fellow with 
so long a walk homeward before him, and it 
may have been the twentieth time, or some 
other number, that he assured her of his especial 
liking for that kind of exercise. It did him 
good, always, he said, for he had to be shut up 
in a law office, over his books and papers, all 
day. He did not tell her that he was then 
going back to them to work over a knotty case 
all night, and she did not know of yet another 
very remarkable occurrence. It was in Gid’s 


room. 


GID GRANGER’S NEW IDEAS. 


IO4 

There was a little box of a stove in that room, 
but there was not often a fire in it, except in the 
very coldest snaps of hard winters. The stove 
was at work, now, however, and a boy sat before 
it with a book in his lap and other books on the 
floor beside him. He was deeply absorbed in 
his reading until there came a gentle knock at 
his door. It was very gentle, but it startled 
him remarkably. 

“ Gid,” said somebody, speaking very low and 
cautiously, “ are you up ? ” 

“ Mattie, is that you ? ” he exclaimed. “ Come 
in ! Come and look at my books.” 

“ Books ! ” she said, as if the word half fright- 
ened her, but she came right in. 

She looked at them and at the pamphlets, 
while he told her how they happened to be there, 
and yet she did not seem to herself to see them 
very clearly. She was thinking of them a little, 
but she was thinking more about some other 
things. 

Of course she did not intend to tell a mere 


GID GRANGER’S NEW IDEAS. 


io 5 

boy like him what had occurred at the Sewing 
Society, but her tongue did it for her. The 
story of the music and the sketch and Jenny 
Trumbull, and of how she came home, went right 
along and told itself, and Gid heard it, but, all 
the while it was telling, his mind was busy with 
ideas which were connected with his books, 
pamphlets, hens, coop, and a lot of other things. 
He did not so much as ask her a question about 
Jenny Trumbull, but he said, “Rube Thompson’s 
a real good fellow. Look at that, Mattie.” 

Her story had found a place at which it was 
willing to stop short, and she took in her hand 
the college catalogue which he held out to her, 
saying : “ I never saw one of those things before. 
Did you ? ” 

“ Perhaps I have. I don’t remember,” she 
said, turning over the leaves listlessly. “ What 
have you and I to do with colleges, and Latin, 
and Greek, and — why, Gid, this is a place for 
girls ! I didn’t think — yes, I had heard of 
colleges for girls. O, Gid ! Gid ! They teach 


io6 


GID GRANGER’S NEW IDEAS. 


drawing and music, too, and almost everything. 
May I have this ? You don’t want it.” 

“ Of course you may,” said he. “ Read ’em 
all if you want to. I don’t know what father’ll 
say, though. He’s down on books.” 

“ I wish he wasn’t,” sighed Mattie. 

“ That isn’t the worst of it,” replied Gid, with 
a shake of the head as if he knew of a danger 
coming. “ Part of the trade was for old Hotch- 
kis’s newspapers and all that sort of thing. 
Father’ll want to burn ’em up.” 

“ They’ll be all around the house,” she said. 
“ He’ll be sure to see ’em.” 

“ Mattie,” said Gid, “ I’ve been thinking how 
to look out for that. I’m going to read every 
one of ’e x m. Shouldn’t wonder if there was lots 
of things in ’em for girls.” 

“ Of course there will be,” she said, “ but 
don’t I wish I had a chance, such as a boy has ! 
I’d go ahead.” 

“ That’s just what I’m going to do,” he said, 
and then he added, as another new idea pricked 


GID GRANGER’S NEW IDEAS. 107 

him “ Mattie, I’ve got to be off at work most 
of the time. Somebody’s got to look out for 
the coop.” 

“ I can ’tend to it,” exclaimed Mattie. “ I 
can save the eggs and the chickens.” 

“ Read a hen book, Mattie. It says ’tending 
’em well is half the business. You can have 
half and it’ll ’mount to something.” 

“ Read ? ” she said. “ Read a hen book ? 
O, dear! I’d rather read — well, I’ll do it. 
Father says you’re throwing away your money.” 

“They won’t cost him anything,” said Gid. 
“ You read what it says about ’em.” 

“ What a book it is,” she said as he held it 
out to her, but she was not really thinking of 
that particular volume. It was putting her in 
mind of endless shelves of other books, and of 
tables littered with art work, and beyond them 
all was a deep mist that prevented her from 
getting at them, for she was almost ready to 
cry. 

“ Mattie,” said Gid again, “ I’m going ahead.” 


108 gid granger’s new ideas. 

“ I’m going to, if I can,” she said, and she 
was listening again to things that Jenny Trum- 
bull had said to her, and to remarks made by 
Mr. Reuben Thompson about art and poetry 
and music and education. She did not utter 
another word aloud, but walked cautiously away 
to her room with the hen book in her hand. 

Gid picked up the biggest book on farming 
and sat down and stuck his feet out toward the 
stove, and the next thing he paid any other 
attention to was a spiteful sputter on the table 
near him and a darkening of the room. 

“ I declare ! ” he exclaimed. “ The candle’s 
burned out. Wonder what time it is ! Don’t I 
wish I had a watch ? Well, I do. And a gun, 
# and a whole heap of things. They all cost 
money and I’ve got to make some. Shouldn’t 
wonder a bit if I’d found out how to do it.” 

The Sewing Society at Judge Hopper’s had 
been an affair of some importance to the Granger 
family. There were girls, and there were old 
people, too, who said something, and various 


GID GRANGER^ NEW IDEAS. 


109 

kinds of things, about the way Mattie Granger 
had sung and about her being so very young, 
and so tall, and that it was good she knew 
enough to follow the accompaniment, if some- 
body else played the piano. 

The next morning dawned as usual, with 
nothing uncommon about it, but an uncommon 
occurrence came in the Granger kitchen before 
the daylight got there. There was a fire in the 
kitchen stove and Mattie Granger stood before 
it with a paper sack of buckwheat flour in her 
hands. She meant to make buckwheat cakes 
and there was no need whatever for her to stare 
so long at the blaze she had kindled. Nobody 
had called her so early, but she had risen with- 
out any help and without once thinking ho\^ 
much it would astonish her mother. 

Gid was astonished first. 

“ You here, Mattie ? ” he exclaimed, as he 
came into the kitchen. “ You don’t say ! Has 
mother come down yet ? ” 

“ No, she hasn’t,” said Marian, shortly, “ nor 


no 


GID GRANGER’S NEW IDEAS. 


father, either. Gid, I want to get out of all 
this.” 

He stood still and looked at her for at least 
ten seconds and another new idea got into 
shape in his mind. 

“ Mattie,” said he, “ old Crane says a fellow 
can fight his way out of ’most anything, if he 
won’t surrender.” 

“ Girls can’t fight,” she replied, with a hope- 
less look. “ They haven’t any chance. I’m here 
and I’ve got to stay here.” 

“ I don’t know ’bout that, Mattie,” he said. 
“ You’re only a girl. That’s so. But you ain’t 
any slouch, no more’n I am.” 

“ Mother and father seem to think I am,” 
she muttered. “ Perhaps I am.” 

“ No, they don’t,” *he said, “ and nobody 
does.” 

“ Yes, I am,” snapped Marian, turning away 
from the stove. “ I’m only fit to make cakes, 
and wash dishes, and churn butter, and I’m not 
half fit for that, either.” 








1 



I 7 M ONLY FIT TO MAKE CAKES AND WASH DISHES/ 7 SNAPPED MARIAN 


\ 




GID GRANGER’S NEW IDEAS. 113 

She did not notice how uncommonly erect he 
was standing or how the red in his face com- 
pared with all the colors around his left eye as 
he replied to that. 

“ Mattie,” he said earnestly, “ you pitch right 
in. I’m going to. I can’t say, just yet, what 
I’m up to. Pitch in ! ” 

More buckwheat flour than was needed went 
into the pan as he went out of the house, and 
she was saying, as if she said it to him : “ Girl 
or no girl, I’ve got as much in me as you have 
in you,” when she heard a sharp exclamation 
from the doorway across the room. 

“ Sakes alive ! ” said the voice of Mrs. Granger. 
“ That’s why she didn’t make no answer. I 
was goin’ to let her sleep awhile. What’s 
a-comin’ ? ” 

Mattie was coming, and in a moment her arms 
were around her mother’s neck, for the kindly 
face wore a troubled, weary, anxious look. 

“ Mother,” she said, “ I do believe you’re 


working too hard.” 


H4 


GID GRANGER’S NEW IDEAS. 


“ It isn’t that, Mattie,” said Mrs. Granger. 
“ Work doesn’t hurt anybody. It’s more’n work 
that’s been pesterin’ me.” 

She refused to tell precisely what it was and 
she and Marian went on briskly with their 
morning’s work. Upstairs, however, old Joshua 
Granger was grumbling at every article of the 
clothing he was putting on, and making savage 
remarks to it concerning women and girls and 
boys. 

“ Endorse for ’em ? ” he said, among other 
things. “ Of course I did. I had to do it, to 
carry ’em along. Pettibone and Rogers are 
good. I won’t have to pay a cent. I endorsed 
for ’em all last year, and carried ’em right along. 
What does a woman, know ’bout business ? It’s 
only five notes, of two thousand each. They’ll 
pay ’em. Maria always was against my way of 
keepin’ things up.” 

That was all mixed up with other remarks 
which did not seem to fit in well. Some could 
have been left out easily. Some referred to 


GID GRANGER’S NEW IDEAS. 


XI S 

wasteful education, to useless books and news- 
papers, to old times and new times and 
particularly to hard times. 

Marian was in the milk-room when she heard 
her mother remark to the coffee-pot, as she put 
it on the stove : “ He got himself all tangled up 
that way once. He ought not to have done it 
again. Leastwise, he’d ought to have spoken 
to me ’bout it before doin’ of it.” 

Therefore, if Gid and Marian were proposing 
any kind of mysterious plans, there was yet 
another mystery, of a serious nature, getting 
ready for the prospects of the Granger family. 

That was a cold, raw day in the raw month of 
March. There was a blustering wind which 
every now and then brought with it light whisks 
of snow, but it seemed as if a very fever of work 
had taken hold of old Joshua Granger. It was 
a fever which made him think of a great many 
things which ought to be done by a boy of Gid’s 
age and size, with a man of his own age and 
size to drive him and to boss him. Such a boy 


Il6 gid granger’s new ideas. 

required drill and discipline, that in due season 
something worth while might be manufactured 
out of him. 

Not one minute of that forenoon did Gid get 
for his hennery. He went out and fed his 
poultry liberally before his father was down- 
stairs, and the look he obtained then made him 
hungry to go on with his work and complete his 
coops and partition the lots, but he was carried 
away, right after breakfast, to a job which his 
father deemed of more pressing importance. It 
was a long job of fence-mending, away over on 
the south side of the farm, and it was about 
half-finished, or somewhat more, when the din* 
der horn at the house told him why he was so 
hungry in another way. 

There was a discontented look upon Gid’s 
face as he walked along. It grew half savage, 
every now and then, and it may have accounted 
for the grim air of authority worn all the morning 
by his father. 

“ There won’t be any nonsense ’round this 


GID GRANGER’S NEW IDEAS. 


ll 7 

farm, Gid,” said the stern old farmer. “ Nor 
there won’t be any sulkin’ or complainin’. I’m 
goin’ to make a man of you.” 

“ Guess I’ve put in a good morning’s work,” 
said Gid. 

“ Not a stroke more’n you’d ought to,” said 
his father. “ There’s goin’ to be a pile of work 
done on this farm this year, hens or no hens — 
you mark it ! ” 

Gid made no reply, but his cheeks were burn- 
ing and there was a hot, full feeling at his 
heart. He had a tremendous respect for his 
father, but it did seem as if things were going 
wrong, somehow. 

They walked in at the kitchen door and the 
old man’s face brightened a little to see and to 
smell so very good a dinner as was spread 
upon the table. His wife had an enviable 
reputation in the neighborhood as being the 
best cook any of her neighbors could mention. 

“Maria,” said he, “this is real nice. You 
mustn’t be extravagant, such times as these, but 


Il8 gid granger’s new ideas. 

I’m right-down hungry. So’s Gid. I’m teachin’ 
him how to work.” 

“ Guess he doesn’t need much teaching,” 
said Marian very unwisely. 

“ You shut right up,” said her father, with 
stern emphasis. “ If your mother can’t teach 
you what genuine work is, maybe I’ll try my 
hand and see what I can do for you and Gid 
both.” 

Marian’s face said all that was said by her in 
a direct reply, but Mrs. Granger was not so 
submissive. 

“Marian’s done a heap of work to-day, 
Joshua,” she said, “ and you needn’t say a word 
to her. We’ll all need to work, if you write 
your name too often.” 

“ Maria ! ” exclaimed he, vigorously, “ I don’t 
want to hear any more ’bout that.” 

She had no more to say about it, but she 
turned to her son. 

“ Gid,” she said, “ what do you think ? Thirty- 
one eggs from your coop this forenoon ! Three 


GID GRANGER’S NEW IDEAS. 


1 1 $ 

of the old hens are wanting to set, too. There 
are just eggs enough to set ’em, with what was 
left over from yesterday. Marian and I set ’em 
all, in the place you made for ’em at the far end 
of the cowshed.” 

“ Just what I was wanting to do,” said Gid, 
“ but I hadn’t a chance.” 

“You ain’t a-goin’ to have,” said his father 
surlily. “ You’ve got to ’tend to farm-work this 
season. I’m goin’ to the Hill after dinner. 
You go and finish mending that fence. See’t 
it’s done before I get back, and don’t you lay a 
finger on that coop this afternoon.” 

It sounded hard, but there came into Gid’s 
face a brave kind of light at that moment. It 
may have been from another new idea, but at all 
events he ate his dinner very good-naturedly 
while Marian did not seem to be doing half so 
well. 

Mr. Granger had something on his mind 
which made him finish his dinner quickly. Gid 
had been doing the same and hardly had they 


120 


GID GRANGER’S NEW IDEAS. 


heard the front door close before he was on his 
feet. 

“ Mother,” said he, “ thank you and Mattie 
for setting the hens. I’m off.” 

“ Every egg’ll hatch ” — she began. 

“ Mother,” interrupted Mattie, “ it’s too bad 
that Gid can’t have a chance.” 

“ Hush, Mattie ! He’s your father, and a 
good one, too.” 

But Gid had dashed away as if he had been 
sent for. He did not give a glance at his coop, 
nor did he slacken his gait until he reached the 
south fence. The bitter March wind was blow- 
ing, and he could not work fast enough to keep 
himself warm, although the state of his mind 
drove him like a whip. As he worked along 
toward the easterly line of the fence, the wind 
brought to his ears a sound that he thought he 
knew, and with it another sound that puzzled 
him. 

“ That’s chopping,” he said, at first, and then 
he exclaimed : “ Jimminy ! What’s that ? It 


GID GRANGER'S NEW IDEAS. 


1 2 I 


isn’t a crow and it isn’t a whistle. There isn’t 
anything ’round here that can yell that way.” 

His father had over-estimated the tinkering 
required by the south fence and it was done, by 
a boy working at a high rate of speed, before 
the middle of the afternoon. Gid would not 
leave it until it was done, in spite of the sounds 
that he heard continually, but as soon as he was 
free he started toward the swamp wood-lot. 

“ Farrell’s at work,” he said to himself, and 
the fact was evidently exciting. 

As he walked rapidly on, there came yet 
another sound — a kind of hoarse cough, cough, 
cough. 

“ Halloo, Gid Granger,” shouted a voice from 
near that cough. “ Come to see how we’re 
getting along ? ” 

“ Whiz-z bur-r-r-szt ! ” went yet another voice, 
and the 'puzzle was solved. 

Farrell and Hotchkiss had put a gang of a 
dozen men into that down timber, and a timber 
buzz saw, run by a portable steam engine, on a 


122 


GID GRANGER’S NEW IDEAS. 


truck. It could be moved up to a log instead 
of having the log moved, and the saw went 
through a tree as if it had been water. 

“ Halloo, Bill Miller,” said Gid. “ Going to 
make things whiz, are you ? ” 

“You bet we are,” said Bill. “This ’ere 
wood-lot ’ll be cleared in no time. We’re to cut 
it and cord it up, and they can haul it when they 
get ready. Wheelin’ll be good, by and by.” 

“ That’s the way to do business,” said Gid. 
“ Where’s Farrell ? ” 

“ He’s up here, every few hours,” said Bill. 
“ Says you ought to have the stumps out, right 
away. Best land he ever saw. Black loam, 
two feet deep.” 

“ ’Most all swamp,” said Gid. 

“ Farrell says he can cut ten rods of ditch 
that’ll let off all the Water. Dry it in no time. 
Put in a patent steam stump-puller. Pull the 
stumps for the wood that’s in ’em. Leave the 
land clean as your face. Plant it in corn.” 

“ Bill,” said Gid, “ I’ve got to see Farrell.” 


GID GRANGER’S NEW IDEAS. 


123 


“ See him,” said Bill. “ He’s beat you, once. 
Sold some of them big curly maples for fifty 
dollars apiece. Work ’em up into cabinet-work, 
you know — chairs, tables.” 

“ Guess he won’t beat me again,” said Gid. 
“ Tell him I was here. I’ve got to go now ; 
I’ll trade with him.” 

And Gid hurried away with another idea. 


CHAPTER VI. 


GID GRANGER UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 

M ARIAN and her mother sat at the table 
in silence for a moment after Gid went 
away to his fence-mending. 

“ Mattie,” said her mother, her voice a little 
tremulous, “your father has his troubles.” 

Then she got up and went and put her arms 
around her daughter and kissed her and added : 
“ Well, Mattie, I don’t care, I was proud of you 
all the evening.” 

“Mother,” said Marian, “you are so sweet, 
and you’re real handsome. I do hope every 
one of Gid’s eggs ’ll hatch.” 

“ We’ll do all we can for him, Mattie,” she 
said. “ Gid’s kind o’ slow and awkward, J)ut 
he’s real good-hearted. Sharp, too.” 


124 


GID GRANGER UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 1 25 

It is not anything wonderful to set a lot of 
hens, but it had been very good for Marian 
and her mother to look out for Gid’s coop, 
that morning, while he was mending fence. 
Even now, however, Marian did not know why 
she so suddenly felt free to tell her mother all 
about the new books and about the papers that 
were coming, and then to bring down the vol- 
umes and the pamphlets and to talk, talk, talk, 
about all sorts of things, while they were mak- 
ing that day’s butter, and all the rest of the 
afternoon. The fact was that they had formed 
a new partnership, with Gid for one of the 
partners, and that they felt more and more 
interested in all the other business they had 
before them. 

Mrs. Granger examined all the printed mat- 
ter Gid had obtained from Dr. Hotchkiss, but 
her main interest in it plainly arose from the 
one fact that it was part of what he had won 
by his bargain. 

She said it was a real cold day for him to be 


126 GID GRANGER UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 

out there mending fence, and she hoped the 
books would not do him any hurt. The last 
time she said it, she was a little in error, for he 
was not anywhere on the line of the south fence. 
He had finished his hasty chat with Bill Miller 
and was coming back. He was feeling very 
warm all over. 

“ I’ll do it,” he said. “ The stumps ’ll come 
right up out of that soft muck. Make piles 
and piles of fire-wood, soon as they’re cut and 
dried. Good enough to burn in a brick kiln.” 

After a moment of silence and fast walking, 
his idea started him again. 

“ There’s more’n thirty acres of it,” he said. 
“Father said so. Never was any use made of 
it and there* can’t be, unless it’s cleared and 
drained out. Hope he can drain it. Even 
then father’d say there wasn’t any use for it 
till the stumps had time to rot out. Swampy. 
Good for nothing. I read all about that kind 
of land last night. If that book’s right and if 
Farrell’s right, I know what to do.” 


GID GRANGER UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 1 27 


If he did know he did not tell anybody, not 
even himself, right out aloud, but he walked 
slower and slower until he came to the south 
fence that he had mended. There was old 
Joshua Granger walking along the fence as if 
he had come to see that his orders had been 
obeyed. He found a little fault, here and 
there, but the wind was in Gid’s favor some- 
what and it cut short the fault-finding. 

“ Gid,” said his father, “ it’s a good hour to 
supper time. You go and ’tend to the stock 
and the horses and I’ll go to the house. ’Twon’t 
be long before you’ll know how to work. I’ve 
got another job for you to-morrow.” 

Gid’s new idea helped him to give a pretty 
good-natured answer, and he was glad to be 
sent to work in the barn and under shelter, 
instead of somewhere out in the wind. 

Supper-time came and the Granger family 
gathered at the table as usual. 

“My chores are all done,” said Gid. 

“ That’s all right,” said his father, “ but you 


128 GID GRANGER UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 

ain’t goin’ to the village to-night. I’m goin’ to 
keep a pretty tight rein on to you this season.” 

“ I don’t want to go to the village,” said Gid, 
“ unless mother wants something.” 

“ I did have an errand ” — she began. 

“You needn’t have any to-night, Maria,” 
said her husband. “ It can wait till to-morrow. 
Gid’s got to stay home.” 

So he had, and the secret of it was that he 
had made a dollar a cord on a large lot of wood 
and that his father had not yet become entirely 
reconciled to a fact so tremendous. 

Half an hour later Mr. Granger was dozing 
away in his comfortable rocking-chair, and his 
wife was knitting on the other side of the sitting- 
room fire. 

“ Mattie,” she suddenly exclaimed, in a low, 
cautious voice, “ where’s Gid ? ” 

Marian put her finger upon her lips and 
pointed at the ceiling. Mrs. Granger’s eye- 
brows contracted a little, and then she smiled 
and nodded. Both of them believed that Gid 



THE WIND WAS IN GID’S FAVOR SOMEWHAT® 

































































































GID GRANGER UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 131 


was up in his own room, busy with his new 
books, and both of them were mistaken. 

The March wind was blowing yet, and it was 
bringing chillier whisks of light, dry snow, 
every now and then, but out at the farther end 
of the hen-lot was a boy, well wrapped up, with 
a gritty look in his face, a hammer in his hand 
and a bundle of laths at his feet, behind the 
lantern which threw so cheerful a light upon 
his line of upright rails. 

Tap, tap, tap, sharp, quick strokes, made 
with feverish haste, and the laths went rapidly 
into place. The last gap was closing in the 
second line of rails when old Joshua Granger 
woke and rubbed his eyes. 

“ Time for me to go to bed,” he said. “Gid’s 
gone ? Guess he was tired enough to go. I’ll 
teach him how to work before I’m done with 
him. I’m like old Elder Crane. When he was 
orderly sergeant of our company he used to say, 
just as he does now, ‘ I do hate a slouch ! ’” — 
and he went upstairs to get some more sleep, 


132 GID GRANGER UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 

but it was nearly two hours later when Gid 
really went to bed. 

Marian Granger actually read several chap- 
ters in a hen book before she went to sleep 
that night, although she was not aware of the 
swift improvement going forward at the hennery 
in which she was now a partner. 

Joshua Granger was astir bright and early 
next morning. If he noticed how many rails 
were lathed, as high as a boy could reach, he 
did not speak of it, and he proceeded to make 
a calculation of his own for the benefit of that 
boy. As soon as breakfast was over and all 
the chores done, he said that the weather was 
against farming and he was going to the vil- 
lage for a talk with the church trustees and 
to get a load of clapboards to fix up the barn 
a little and to give Gid something to do with 
his time. 

“ You come out to the barn,” he said to Gid, 
“ and I’ll set you a fair stint.” 

He had calculated it with some care. 


GID GRANGER UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 1 33 

“You can take that there floorin’ up,” he 
said, “and take out them rotten planks, and 
put in them new planks, and spike ’em all 
down, and then you can shell out a bushel of 
seed-corn. There it lies. You can take off 
every kernel before dinner.” 

“ There’s more’n one bushel there,” said Gid. 

“ No, there isn’t,” said his father. “ I’ve 
measured corn before you was born.” 

“ Bushel’n a half,” murmured Gid. 

“ I’ll give you every kernel there is over a 
bushel ! ” growled his father severely. “ You 
shell it and measure it. I’ll measure it, too, 
when you get through.” 

“ All right,” said Gid, and when his father 
was out of hearing, he added, “ A bargain’s a 
bargain, anyhow, and he forgot that there’s a 
hole in the floor just there. I’ll shell it.” 

Up came the rotten planking of the old barn 
floor, as if two or three, or it may be four, ener- 
getic boys had hold of the crowbar. There 
was some dust, raised, but the beams below 


134 GID GRANGER UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 

were bare in no time. Down went the new 
planks, sawed and fitted, as if a young steam 
engine were running the saw and driving the 
spikes. Ordinary slouch-boy work would have 
taken hours to it, but Gid’s new ideas were 
creeping into all his bones and muscles and 
besides the work kept him warm. 

As soon as that part of his stint was done, he 
put down a bushel measure and put a spade 
with the edge of it reaching over the rim of 
the measure. 

“ Never was a corn-sheller on this farm yet,” 
he said, “but there will be. There’s more’n a 
bushel in that heap, just as I said there was, 
and I’ll find out what there is in the hollow 
under it. Father’ll stand right up to his word, 
every time. Nobody ever knew him to change 
a hair. He’s as honest as a broad axe.” 

It was a grand good thing for a boy to be 
able to say that of his father and to know that 
all other men said it, and it helped Gid to shell 
corn like a house afire. 


GID GRANGER UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 135 

“ There ! ” he exclaimed at last, as he poured 
the second measure into a sack. “ There’s a 
full bushel and two quarts over. Now for my 
corn. Every peck stands for a dozen of eggs.” 

How he did shell and how he did chuckle, 
when he found how completely his father had 
overlooked the hollow in the barn floor when he 
shoveled that seed-corn out of the bin until he 
guessed that he had put out a bushel, good and 
full measure, for Gid to shell. 

“ Bushel ? ” shouted Gid, as he jumped up 
with the last bare cob in his hand. “ Why, if it 
isn’t nigh six pecks ! I won’t take it to the coop 
till father has seen it, though.” 

It was after eleven o’clock, and Mr. Granger 
was on his way home. He had set out to come 
after a talk with the trustees in which he had 
consented to something very new and against 
all his notions. 

The church choir had gone to pieces for 
about the forty-seventh time, and Deacon 
Crumb proposed to have only a quartette 


136 GID GRANGER UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 

until they could make a new choir, somehow. 
He and Rube Thompson, he said, and Lib 
Herriman and Marian Granger would make as 
good a quartette as there ever had been in any 
church in Genentaha Hill. All the deacons and 
all the trustees, and all their wives, and the min- 
ister and Mrs. Judge Hopper had agreed to it, 
and she said that they could come to her house to 
practice. Joshua Granger hated so new a thing 
as a quartette, but he gave it up when they 
called it a small choir that was to grow up into 
a big choir. That was what he found so hard 
to tell when he got home, that he kept it till 
after taking his team to the barn and unloading 
his clapboards. He wanted, also, to see what 
Gid had been doing, but when he went into 
that part of the barn it was empty. 

There was the new flooring, down, all as it 
should be. There stood two sacks that might 
contain corn. He called for Gid, but no 
answer came, and so he deliberately measured 
the corn in the nearest sack. 


GID GRANGER UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 137 


“ Bushel and two quarts ! ” he exclaimed. 
“ Gid’s done it. What’s the other ? ” 

Again he measured. 

“ Bushel ’nd a half, a’most,” he said groutily. 
“ Did I make such a blunder as that ? Hole in 
the floor? I declare! Well, it’s Gid’s corn! 
That boy’s as sharp as a razor” — and he could 
not help laughing loudly, for Gid Granger was 
a son of his and he really took a deep interest 
in him. 

“ I wouldn’t like to have a boy of mine beat 
by anybody on a bargain,” he said to himself. 
“ But he mustn’t get too sharp. I must look 
out for that. It’s Gid’s corn ! ” 

He was wondering what had become of the 
owner of that grain when Gid came in, a little 
out of breath. 

“ Going for your dinner, are ye ? ” said his 
father. “ Well, I won’t say anything this time. 
You’ll waste it all on your hens.” 

“ They can eat it all,” said Gid, and he did 
not say why he was out of breath. 


138 GID GRANGER UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 

He did not wish to say how fast he had trav- 
eled, after shelling that corn, or what he had 
talked about with Mr. Farrell at the wood-lot. 

“Good corn-land, eh ?” Gid had said, after a 
brief chat with reference to stump-pullers. 
“ You’ll want corn for your teams ? ” 

“ Of course I will,” said Mr. Farrell. 

“ How’d you like to run this land on shares, 
if ’twas pulled clean ? ” asked Gid. 

“ If I was to have the lease of it for two 
years, I’d pull it clean, short order, and go you 
halves on the crop. I wouldn’t give more’n a 
third, on common land.” 

“Don’t say a word to anybody,” said Gid, 
“ I’ll see you again in a day or two.” 

“ Sharpest little scamp I ever came across,” 
said Mr. Farrell. “ He doesn’t look it, neither. 
I took him for a sort of lump, at first. Big- 
boned and heavy, you know. What an awful 
black eye he’s got, just now, too ! ” 

Gid had all but forgotten how entirely his 
beauty had been destroyed, and it was partly 


GID GRANGER UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 139 


because he knew he never had any to lose. He 
ran most of the way back to the barn and man- 
aged to reach it in time to meet his father. 

That com was wheeled away to the hen- 
house before dinner, to keep it from being 
mixed with anything else and — well, those forty 
hens and four roosters were eating a great deal 
and all the eggs that Marian and her mother 
were gathering were to be needed to pay for 
the laths. They were grand good hens, for 
they did it in three days and the fourth day 
there were two more setting. 

“ They’ll all be setting, before long,” said 
Mrs. Granger. “What’ll you do for eggs and 
for corn, then ? ” 

“Deacon Johnson says he’ll back me,” re- 
plied Gid. “ I’m paying him right along. If 
father ’d only let me have a little more of my 
time ! ” 

There had been no change in the mind of old 
Joshua Granger. The afternoon of the day 
when he measured his corn, Gid had to put in 


140 GID GRANGER UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 

on clapboards. On each of the following days, 
excepting Sunday, some new job was found and 
laid out for him, weather or no weather. 

Marian sang in the church quartette that 
Sunday. Two thirds of the congregation were 
opposed to the quartette until they heard it 
sing, and only one third, including all the other 
members of the old choir, were opposed to it 
afterwards. 

Rube Thompson felt that it was his duty 
rather than Deacon Crumb’s, to see Marian 
home from the evening service. Gid had been 
unusually good, too, and had been in his place 
in the family pew. He had been in no hurry 
to get home and some way or other he met 
Rube about ten rods from the gate, after Marian 
was safe. She was in the house and her father 
had just said : 

“ Where’s Gid ? I’m glad he went, so you 
could have company home.” 

Marian had not answered instantly, but Mrs. 
Granger remarked : 


GID GRANGER UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 141 


“ He’d ought to be ’round in the woodshed, 
a-bringin’ in his night’s wood. We’d all ought 
to be in bed, quick as we can.” 

He was not in the woodshed, he was in the 
road, saying to Rube Thompson : 

“You’re a lawyer.” 

“ That’s what I am,” said Rube. 

“ Can a man buy a piece of land, or hire a 
piece of land, of his own father ? ” asked Gid. 

“An old man like you can’t,” said Rube, 
“but a man of my age can.” 

“ I wanted to know ” — 

“Gid,” said Rube, “it’s pretty late, Sunday 
night. You come to the office any time you can. 
I’ll tell you all about it. It’s blowing kind o’ 
cold, Gid. You needn’t be afraid but what I’ll 
fix you. Tell Miss Granger about it, too.” 

“All right, Rube,” said Gid. “I’ll come 
down, soon’s I can. I’ve got a big thing in my 
mind.” 

“ Good-night, Gid,” replied Rube, as he 
turned up his overcoat collar and hurried away. 


142 GID GRANGER UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 

In a minute or so more, Gid was really in the 
woodshed and he was saying to himself: “ Miss 
Granger ! That does sound kind o’ new and 
queer. Rube’s a good fellow, though, and if he 
runs short of law he can ask old Judge Hopper. 
He’s got a whole library of it.” 

His father had come out to the kitchen for a 
cup of milk before going to bed, and he had it 
in his hand when Gid threw down a great arm- 
ful of wood. 

“ I don’t know exactly what I’ll set you at in 
the morning,” he said. 

“Father,” replied Gid a little excitedly, “you 
said just sixty dollars for that twelve-acre stock- 
lot ? ” 

“ There’s more’n twelve,” said his father. 
“ Got anybody ? I’ll stand to it. Sign the 
lease any day.” 

“ Then I want to go to the village, in the 
morning,” said Gid. “ Maybe I’ve got some- 
body. But, anyway, what’ll you take for the 
swamp-wood lot, and give a fellow two years ? ” 


GID GRANGER UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 1 43 


“ Good cleared land’s worth anywhere from 
a hundred dollars an acre, up to almost any- 
thing,” said Mr. Granger thoughtfully. “ If it 
wasn’t Sunday evening ” — 

“ The stumps ” — suggested Gid. 

“Wouldn’t rot away in a long time,” pondered 
his father. “ Swamp, too. If it wasn’t Sunday 
evening, I’d say I’d sell for sixty dollars an 
acre. You oughtn’t to talk business to-night, 
and I won’t. You’d better go to bed. I’ll let 
you off to-morrow forenoon, and you can see 
what you can do. It’s time I did get something 
from those two patches.” 

“ Guess you will,” said Gid, as he hurried 
out after more wood. 

Joshua Granger went through the sitting- 
room, upstairs, and on his way he remarked : 

“ Maria, I just don’t hardly know what to 
do ’bout Gid. Something seems to have got 
into him.” 


CHAPTER VII. 


LAND AND LAW AND NEWSPAPERS. 

T HE Granger family had very little use for 
the post-office. Now and then a letter 
came, and they were sure to get it, sooner or 
later, by the special help of the postmaster. 
Gid Granger himself, up to that very Monday 
morning, had never taken out or put in a letter, 
and yet, after a talk with his father, that ran 
along while they were attending to things around 
the barn, he said to Marian : “ Post-office, Mat- 
tie. They’ll be there by this time.” 

“ Here’s your eggs, Gid,” said his mother, 
handing him a basket. “ Saturday afternoon’s, 
and yesterday’s, and some this morning. There’s 
an even three dozen, and we’ll set another hen 
to-morrow.” 


144 


LAND AND LAW AND NEWSPAPERS. 1 45 

It was a fact, for the hens had forgotten about 
Sunday, except those that were settled on their 
nests. 

Gid hurried away with his basket, and the 
first man he met in the village was Dr. Hotch- 
kiss, as placid as ever, but evidently a little 
merry about something. 

“ Gid,” he said, “ those papers. Got ’em ? ” 

“ Going for ’em,” said Gid. 

“ One of ’em was a joke on me, Gid. It’s a 
lady’s paper. If you took all four together, 
their offer was, when you bought the farm- 
books, you got ’em, books and all, for ’bout 
half price, and I went in on it. I got four new 
subscribers for one of ’em, and they sent me 
a jinted fish-pole. Never fished in my life. 
If you want it, you can have it. Belongs to 
the papers.” 

“ I’ll come and get it,” said Gid. “ Pay you 
for it, too, somehow, soon’s I know what it’s 
worth.” 

“All right,” laughed the placid speculator, 


146 LAND AND LAW AND NEWSPAPERS. 

and Gid pushed on to Crumb & Corrigan’s to 
sell his eggs. 

It was a large, roomy, cluttered-up but showy 
concern, where you could buy anything you 
wanted and a perfect host of things that you 
didn’t have any use for. 

Deacon Crumb was counting Gid’s eggs and 
talking about the way the quartette sang, Sun- 
day evening, when a voice behind them made 
Gid turn around. 

“ Crumb,” said a strongly-built but heavy- 
faced man, “ I want a job of plowin’ and 
haulin’. Do you know of any ? ” 

“Can’t say’s I do — that’s three dozen, not 
one of ’em cracked,” said Crumb. 

“ Guess I know of one, Mr. Pepper,” said 
Gid. 

“ You do, do ye ? ” said Mr. Pepper. “ I’ve 
got somethin’, lots on in the season, but I want 
an early job.” 

“ This one’s right away, if the bargain’s fixed 
to-day,” said Gid, and a score of questions and 


LAND AND LAW AND NEWSPAPERS. 1 47 


answers followed, without Mr. Pepper or Mr. 
Crumb learning just where there was so much 
manure to haul or where it was to be put. 

“ I’ll take it at them Aggers,” said Pepper 
finally. “ Haul out the manure at fifty cents a 
load, plow and harrer at for three dollars an 
acre, two more harrerin’s, if the man’s a fool 
and wants it done, for a dollar an acre more. 
I’d like to get the seedin’ of it and the culti- 
vatin’ of it, and I’ll do the fair thing. Mart’s 
got to work, this season, and so hev I.” 

“ I’ll see you ’bout it in a day or two,” said 
Gid, and off he went. 

His next call was at the post-office, and he 
was trying not to breathe too hard when he 
asked if there was anything for Gideon Granger. 

“ Hello ! ” he exclaimed, a moment later. 
“ Magazines — farm paper — hen paper — lady’s 
paper — ’nother lady’s paper, on trial for two 
months — those are all circulars — new stoves 
— guns, fertilizers — plows — patent hatching 
machine — guess they think I’m twenty-one.” 


148 LAND AND LAW AND NEWSPAPERS. 

“ You ought to have a box,” said the clerk, 
through the window. “Only twenty-five cents 
a quarter.” 

“ There’s your twenty-five cents,” said Gid, 
very red in the face, and as soon as his receipt 
for Box Number 31 was given him, he was out 
of that place. It was a little the queerest tingle 
he had ever felt and the papers under his arm 
must have been nearly red-hot, they burned 
him so. 

“ It’ll just upset mother,” he said, “ and I 
can’t guess what father’ll say. That thing’ll 
keep Mattie awake all night. There’s a sheet 
of music in it and a sheet of dress patterns.” 

Things tumble around wonderfully in such a 
world as this is getting to be, and all the old- 
time ways of living are breaking up so fast that 
you can hardly tell where they are going to. 

Gid went to Judge Hopper’s law office, to see 
Rube Thompson, and it was an awfully solemn 
place for a boy of his age to venture into. The 
very air of it made him take his hat off and 


4 



HIS NEXT CALL WAS AT THE POST-OFFICE. 


























LAND AND LAW AND NEWSPAPERS. 151 

wipe his shoes on the corn-husk mat, at the left 
of the door, as he went in. 

“ Come right in here, Gid,” said Rube Thomp- 
son, and he led the way into the inner office, a 
more awful place, even, than the outer room 
where half a dozen men were smoking and 
talking. 

Gid sat down, sitting away forward on his 
chair, and explained to Rube the lease of the 
stock-lot and the scheme for the purchase of 
the swamp wood-lot, and all the while there 
was a sort of coughing, wheezing sound, at a 
table near them. Then there was a great cough 
and a choked-off laugh and it was Judge Hopper 
himself who spoke. 

“ Rube ! Rube ! Rube ! ” he exclaimed. “ He’s 
my client ! I’ll advise him. You take the 
lease of the stock-lot in your name, for him. 
Take the bond for a deed of the swamp land, 
to pay half in one year and half in two years. 
I’ll back him. Genentaha Hill is an ant hill of 
loafers and slouches, I’m glad of one boy 


152 LAND AND LAW AND NEWSPAPERS. 

that’s alive and at work. Made a dollar a cord 
on his wood ! Big coop full of chickens ! 
Farming it ! Buying land ! Hurrah for Gid ! 
He can have all the law I can give him.” 

“ Judge Hopper,” began Gid. 

“Shut up,” said the judge. “Rube, take 
some blanks and fill ’em up, ready for his father 
to sign. I’ll be his guardian. I’ll see him 
through. You won’t lose anything, Rube.” 

“ Lose anything ? ” said Rube. “ I wasn’t 
thinking of that. I told him I’d see him 
through.” 

“ I’ll take him for my client,” said the judge. 

“ Seems to me he is a client of mine,” said 
Rube, hesitatingly. 

“ No, he isn’t, he’s mine. How’s your eye, 
Gid ? Pretty blue yet, eh ? I haven’t had so 
good a joke in a long time.” 

Gid promised to call again, but the judge said 
he would attend to the closing of the bargain 
without any help, and his young client walked 
out. He had some other errands, one of them 


LAND AND LAW AND NEWSPAPERS. 1 53 

with Farrell, one with Pepper, and he and Mart 
Pepper went together to the house of Dr. 
Hotchkiss to get the new fishing rod. 

“ It’s a bully rod,” said Mart, “ but you can’t 
catch anything ’round here. You don’t know 
how to fish with flies.” 

“ Take it right along,” said the doctor. “ I 
tried to use it once, and I caught a cold in 
the head that laid me up for a week. Tore 
my pantaloons, too, and got poisoned with ivy. 
I never want to see that thing again.” 

The placid man always had a good reason 
for getting out of one speculation or into another. 
He was feeling pretty well, that morning, more- 
over, for Mr. Farrell had made some very large 
contracts for the sale of bricks and there was a 
fine prospect for making money before him. 

Gid went home with his rod, after Mart and 
nine other boys had examined it and told him 
what they thought about it. He felt more and 
more sober all the way. What should he say to 
his father about those pieces of land ? 


154 LAND AND LAW AND NEWSPAPERS. 

Should he keep it a secret ? 

Well, no, he couldn’t do that, and he ought 
not to do it, and it would be mean to do it. 

“ I won’t ! ” he exclaimed, as he reached the 
gate. “ I’ll go right in and tell him. He never 
backed out of a bargain in all his life ! But 
what’ll he say ? ” 

He was not aware that his father had gone to 
the village, or that he had met Judge Hopper, 
or that he had been led into the law office and 
had signed the lease and the bond for the deed 
of the wood-lot. 

That was what Joshua Granger had done, 
and after it was done, Gid’s law-council had 
leaned back in his chair and laughed until he 
was almost purple. 

“ What’s the matter now ? ” asked Mr. Granger. 
“ It just makes me grin too, to think of Rube 
a-farmin’ of it, but ” — 

“ Rube ? ” roared the judge. “ Why,*it isn’t 
Rube, it’s Gid ! ” 

“ Gid ? ” exclaimed Joshua Granger. “ Bless 


LAND AND LAW AND NEWSPAPERS. 1 55 


my soul ! • That boy ! Well, it’s all right, Judge. 
It’s all right, Rube. I’ll keep my contract. 
That boy ” — and he shot out of the law office 
as if he had suddenly been sent for. He had 
not yet set out for home when Gid entered the 
house, asking for him, and learned of his 
absence. In the next breath after telling him 
that, Marian shouted : 

“ Gid ? Gid ? Did you go to the post-office ? 
Did you get ’em ? O, dear me, what is all that ? ” 

“ Gideon,” said his mother, “ what is it ? ” 

“ Mother,” replied Gid, “ I don’t half-know 
yet myself. You and Mattie look at ’em. 
Look at this ’ere fish-rod.” 

“ O, what will father say ! ” exclaimed Marian. 
“ Music ! Dress patterns ! Mother ! And the 
paper’s full of all sorts of things and a new 
novel just begun.” 

“ You sha’n’t read it, Mattie,” said her 
mother severely, “ not, at least, till I’ve read it 
myself and know what it is. Most all of them 
things is pisen. O, Gideon ! Gideon! Your 


156 LAND AND LAW AND NEWSPAPERS. 

father’ll say you and Mattie are going to ruin ! 
I don’t know but what you are. It’s awful ! ” 

What she really meant was that it was all 
spick and span new to her and that she was 
getting a startling glimpse of the new world 
into which Gid and Marian were growing up 
and of which her husband and herself knew 
almost nothing. 

“ Mother ! mother ! ” exclaimed Marian, as 
the pages of the magazine flew through her fin- 
gers. “ This is Gid’s more than mine, but there 
are loads of things in it for you and me.” 

“ Mattie,” said her mother, “ you and Gid 
carry all those things upstairs. I’ve got to 
look at ’em. I’ve got to talk with your father.” 

Marian flitted out of the room, taking with 
her everything that had come from the post- 
office, but Gid remained. “ Mother,” he said, 
“ I want to tell you what I’ve been up to.” 

That was what he tried to do and she listened, 
now and then holding up both hands and 
exclaiming, “ O, Gid ! ” 


LAND AND LAW AND NEWSPAPERS. 1 57 


She had just heard his story through and she 
was saying something about Rube Thompson 
and the quartette and the stock-lot and potatoes, 
all tumbled up together, when she was inter- 
rupted. 

A tall, very erect, solemn-looking man, stood 
in the sitting-room doorway, and a deep, sono- 
rous voice seemed to be rolling all around in it. 

“ Well, young man,” it said, “ you have gone 
and done it this time.” 

“ Father,” said Gid, but there he had to stop, 
for there was nothing else on his mind to say. 

“ How’ll you ever pay your rent ? ” asked his 
father. “ Has Rube got to ? ” 

“ Comes out of the coop,” said Gid, “ ’cording 
to ’greement.” 

He was able to follow that with a statement 
of his bargain with Joel Pepper, and that Joel 
had agreed to take Farrell and Hotchkiss for 
paymasters. That wiped away part of Gid’s 
wood profits and his father said so, very sternly, 
but added : “ A bargain’s a bargain, Gid. 


158 LAND AND LAW AND NEWSPAPERS. 

You’ve made it and you’ve got to keep it, if you 
lose every cent. Who’s to pay me the hundred 
dollars for the manure ? ” 

“ Pay yourself,” said Gid, “ as the cash comes 
in from Farrell and Hotchkiss.” 

“ I can do that,” said his father. “ You’ve 
shaved yourself awfully on that bargain, but 
you made it yourself. The money stays in the 
family, anyhow. I’ll be able to keep so much.” 

“ I’m satisfied if you are,” said Gid. 

“ What on earth do you want of that wood- 
lot ? Who’s to pay for that ? I shall hold 
Rube and Hopper for every cent. I’ll teach 
’em how to play tricks on old Josh Granger.” 

“ Farrell’s going to have the stumps right 
out,” said Gid, “ and drain it and put it in 
corn ” — 

“ Gid ! ” and the old farmer had seated him- 
self, but he now actually jumped, so suddenly 
did he spring to his feet, “ Gid ! I never 
thought o’ that. That there land, if it was 
cleared, and drained, and plowed up, and fenced, 


LAND AND LAW AND NEWSPAPERS. 1 59 

like he’ll do it for corn, is worth a hundred and 
fifty dollars an acre, of any man’s money. 
Maria, what do you think ? ” 

“ Father,” said she, almost crying, “ he’s 
only a boy, and he didn’t know he was doing 
anything wicked. Don’t you be too hard on 
him.” 

“ Gid,” said his father, “ you go out of the 
room,” and Gid did so. “ Maria,” continued 
the old man, “ thirty acres, at sixty dollars, is 
eighteen hundred, isn’t it ? ” 

“ Yes,” she said, “ but he hasn’t stole one 
foot of it, and he’s your own son ! ” 

“ Thirty acres at a hundred and fifty is forty- 
five hundred. Why, Maria,” said he, with a 
cough of exultation, “ that there boy’s cleared 
twenty-seven hundred dollars the day he got 
hold of that land and got Farrell into that con- 
tract. Old Hopper vows he’ll see him through, 
and Farrell can’t beat the judge, and he can’t 
beat Gid. There’s something got into that 
boy.” 


l6o LAND AND LAW AND NEWSPAPERS. 

“ Father,” she said, “ there’s Elder Crane 
a-coming in. Don’t you say nothing against 
Gid.” 

There was no time for any more discussion, 
for the Elder had stopped to get some dinner 
and to have a talk. Gid and Marian told each 
other that they had never before been so glad to 
see him, and about half an hour after dinner, 
while Marian was wiping the dishes and Gid 
was at work on the coop, Mrs. Granger heard 
Elder Crane saying : 

“Josh! Josh! What that boy wants is dis- 
cipline. He isn’t any kind of slouch, but he’s 
got to be drilled all the while. Put him through 
and hold him right in.” 

“ That’s just what I’ll do, Sergeant,” said 
Joshua. 

There was no opportunity, during the rest of 
that day, for any drill more severe than that 
of shelling seed-corn. Gid was almost willing 
to sit and shell and think, for he had an immense 
amount of thinking to do. As for old Joshua 


LAND AND LAW AND NEWSPAPERS. l6l 


Granger, after Elder Crane had gone, he thought 
he would go up the road to Cuyler’s, to see 
about — well, he did not say exactly what it was 
about, but when he got out into the road he 
stood and watched the old stock-lot for full five 
minutes. 

“ Nothing but critters been on it for five 
years. They won’t get nothin’.” 

There was a^jTrtSTsupper after they returned, 
and he never asked how Gid and Marian spent 
their evening. He had too much upon his mind 


CHAPTER VIII. 


GOING AHEAD FASTER AND FASTER. 

UESDAY morning came and it was a 



JL kind of curiosity. The March wind and 
weather had gone wandering around the country 
until it had fallen into a trap somewhere, and 
got caught, so that the sun had things all his 
own way. The air was like a slice of June. 

Old Joshua Granger got out of bed with a 
feeling, not very clear but terribly irritating, 
that he had walked right into a trap, set for him 
by Judge Hopper. He was wondering, too, 
when and how Gideon had found the time and 
the money to buy his hens, finish his coop, close 
bargains with Farrell, and still do all his chores 
and jobs. Gid was getting to be a conundrum, 
and he had got to be solved. 


162 


GOING AHEAD FASTER AND FASTER. 1 63 

Marian was up as soon as Gid himself, and 
that meant early enough. 

Her father was downstairs a little more 
promptly than usual and he went right out to 
the barns, as if he expected to catch Gid at some- 
thing. He did, for all the morning’s work was 

going ahead with as much energy as there was 

y 

any reason in. There was no fault to be found, 
and that was a victory for Gid, and it sent his 
father back to the house. He had not said one 
word about land, or hens or manure. 

Mrs. Granger had a new experience in the 
house. Her morning’s work seemed to have 
been done for her beforehand, but she herself 
was under an uncommon pressure and took hold 
of everything as if there were company coming 
or as if time were worth a cent a second. Two 
women can do a great deal if they begin at day- 
light and fly around in that style. 

Mr. Granger’s mind troubled him more and 
more, and just after breakfast he said to his 
wife : 


164 GOING AHEAD FASTER AND FASTER. 

“Don’t say anything to Gid, just yet, but I’m 
going to go and have a talk with Farrell and 
Hotchkiss. I want to know when they’re going 
to begin. I want to see Rube and the Judge 
and Joel Pepper.” 

Off he went, forgetting to set any stint for 
Gid, and no sooner had he gone than a desper- 
ate push of work began upon the hen-house. 
The great point now was the nests for setting 
hens. Two more were ready to go into the 
neat boxes Gid was preparing, and he would 
only have eggs enough that day to supply them. 

Marian hardly knew why she scurried around 
as she did, and when she stood stock-still, 
every now and then, and looked as if she were 
thinking, it was all a sham, for her head was 
too full to think. 

“ Mattie,” said her mother at last, “ ’pears to 
me as if everything was done. I don’t want to 
sit down, nuther.” 

“ Mayn’t I bring down those papers, mother ? ” 
asked Marian. 



THE MORNING’S WORK WAS GOING AHEAD WITH ENERGY. 





GOING AHEAD FASTER AND FASTER. 167 

“ Sho ! Well — no — yes — you might as 
well. The pesky things ! Bring ’em down. I 
want to know what’s a-comin’ to the house.” 

Marian was off like a flash and, in a few 
moments more, she and her mother were sitting, 
side by side, with a great sheet of patterns 
before them. 

“ I do declare ! ” exclaimed Mrs. Granger. 
“ What won’t they wear next ! Those things 
over there look as if they’d be right pretty, 
though, if you was rich.” 

“ They’re lovely ! ” sighed Marian. “ Look 
at that ! ” 

Comment followed comment until the page 
of plates had been well studied. Marian 
picked up the music and then the magazine, 
while her mother held fast to the lady’s 
paper. Mrs. Granger did not say what she was 
reading, but it was not long before she broke 
right out. 

“ Mattie,” she exclaimed, “ I think she did 
just right ! So did he, but he was a kind of a 


1 68 GOING AHEAD FASTER AND FASTER. 

fool, too. There’s no telling what a fool a 
young feller can be” — 

“ Why, mother,” said Marian, “ what is it ? ” 

“ I don’t know, myself, yet,” said Mrs. 
Granger, “ but I can tell you how it had ought 
to come out. It’s a real true story and I just 
want to see the end on it.” 

“ Oh ! ” said Marian. “ That’s the new story 
in that paper. Why, it hasn’t but just begun.” 

“ Well, you go right out to Gid and tell him 
to go down to the post-office and get me the 
next number.” 

“ It won’t be there till to-morrow or next day, 
mother,” said Marian. 

“ ’Pears to me I don’t want to wait,” said 
Mrs. Granger. “ I never read a novel in all 
my life and I did say I never would, and I 
won’t have you sp’iled, or Gid neither. This is 
a real true story.” 

“ I wish I had some books, mother,” mur- 
mured Marian. 

“ Mattie,” said her mother, “ I don’t so much 


GOING AHEAD FASTER AND FASTER. 169 

mind your reading those ’ere things, that come 
right along into the house, and I won’t let you 
waste your time on ’em, but we seem to kind o’ 
make time, when we get up early. I guess I’ll 
keep the run of that story.” 

Marian read and read and read, and so did 
her mother, and they did not altogether put 
away the books and papers while they were 
cooking dinner. 

“Sho!” exclaimed Mrs. Granger. “Your 
father’d say I’d lost what wits I had.” 

She did not at all guess at the morning’s ex- 
periences of her husband. He had by no 
means accepted Gid’s very brief statement of 
what Mr. Farrell was going to do, and when he 
walked over to the wood-lot he had no clear 
idea of finding anything already there except 
fallen trees, or perhaps a chopper or so. 

He heard the cough and scream of the en- 
gine first, then the chopping, then the buzz of 
the saw, and his very mouth opened when he 
came near enough to see what had already 


I70 GOING AHEAD FASTER AND FASTER. 

been accomplished. When timber is already 
down, a dozen able men can feed a great deal 
of it to a hungry buzz-saw. 

“ Hullo, Mr. Granger,” shouted Farrell. 
“Right glad you've come over. I want you to 
see to the measure of all we’ve corded up.” 

“ Corded up ? ” exclaimed Mr. Granger. 

“Yes,” said Farrell. “’Most anything ’ll 
do to burn in a kiln. There’s about thirty cord 
of prime firewood, I’ve sold a’ready. Five dol- 
lars a cord. Nets me ’bout a dollar a cord 
profit. That other pile, ’bout thirty cord, is 
kiln-wood. I’ll have the stump-puller here to- 
morrow.” 

“You’re a driver !” exclaimed Mr. Granger. 
“ Gid said you was.” 

“Glad he did,” said Farrell. “ I signed the 
’greement he made with Joel Pepper. I don’t 
begin to pay him till he’s at work, though. I’ll 
pay you for all that’s corded up, and Gid’s 
part, ’bout sixty, is to go to you, he said. That 
there boy’s going to be worth something.” 


GOING AHEAD FASTER AND FASTER. 171 

That might be so, but his father felt as if he 
had fallen into another trap and as if his son 
were getting ahead altogether too fast. He 
grumbled an assent to almost everything 
Farrell had to say after that, and then he made 
his way- to the village. 

“ Hullo! I say ! Granger ! ” shouted a man 
behind him, as he passed Crumb & Corrigan’s. 
“ Hold on!” 

“What’s the matter, Joel?” replied Mr. 
Granger, whirling to see the very man he was 
in search of. 

“Tell Gid it’s all right with Farrell, and I’ll 
begin haulin’ manure to-morrer mornin’, onless 
there’s a storm or a hard freeze.” 

“ I’ll tell him,” said Gid’s father. « Have 
you seen Rube Thompson ? ” 

“ Course I hev,” said Joel, “ and he’s gone 
clean cracked on manure and plowin’ and har- 
rowin’. Never see such a greenhorn ’bout 
potatoes. He’s goin’ to make a garding or a 
hot-house out o’ that there twelve-acre patch.” 


172 GOING AHEAD FASTER AND FASTER. 

Old Joshua Granger had never done that 
sort of thing by any land that he had ever put 
in potatoes, or in any other crop, and he fully 
agreed with Joel’s contempt for a mere young 
lawyer like Rube Thompson. 

He did not go to see that man, however, and 
he went home to dinner a little early. It was 
a positive relief to him to meet Elder Crane 
and carry him along. 

“Why, Josh,” said the Elder, “I was there 
only yesterday.” 

“ Don’t care if it’s every day in the week,” 
said his old comrade, “ long’s you’re anywheres 
’round. The muster roll’s a-gettin’ shorter and 
shorter, Sergeant.” 

“ Not many names left on it, Josh,” said 
Sergeant Crane, and their walk to the house 
was a sort of roll-call. 

They had hardly entered the sitting-room 
before Marian hurried in from the kitchen, 
with a flushed, half-frightened face, only to find 
that she had come too late. The first glance 


GOING AHEAD FASTER AND FASTER. 1 73 


of her father’s eye had detected the magazine, 
lying asleep on the settee. 

“ What’s this ? ” he sternly demanded, pick- 
ing up the pamphlet. “ I won’t have no novels 
and trash and nonsense coming into my house.” 

“ Recruitin’ for Satan ! ” solemnly added 
Elder-Sergeant-Crane, while Marian’s father 
turned over the evil leaves with a darkening 
face. 

“ Gettysburg ? Gettysburg ? ” he growled sud- 
denly. “ What do any of these fellers know 
’bout Gettysburg? Sergeant, you and I were 
there! — we were — Marian, go into the 
kitchen ! Sergeant, just you look a-here. 
Whoever wrote this and made the picter didn’t 
know how the scoop of that hill looked from 
Webb’s batteries. It kind o’ swep’ to the right, 
don’t you remember ? So’s that the rebs came 
up along a curve.” 

“Part on ’em,” said Crane hastily, “part on 
’em reached the ridge. Look a-here, Josh, if 
any feller that was there has been a-writing. 


174 going ahead faster and faster. 

Josh Granger, it was a rebel! I’d give a good 
deal to know this ’count of that fight. They 
know things ’bout it that we don’t know. We 
was whipped the first day, and we was out-fit 
the second day, and they did their best fighting 
on the third day, and we broke ’em. I want to 
read all they’ve got to say.” 

“ So do I,” said Josh, and down they sat, 
side by side, with that pamphlet on their knees. 

“Mother,” whispered Marian, when she went 
to call them to dinner and came hastily back 
on tiptoe, “ Mother ! Gid ! Look into the sit- 
ting-room and see father and Elder Crane.” 

“Keep still, Mattie,” said Gid, after he had 
taken his look. “Guess I know what to do, 
now ” — and it might be that he was studying 
up yet another trap of some kind for one or 
both of those utterly absorbed old soldiers. 

They got away from the literary ambush 
they had marched into and they came to the 
table for what they called their rations. Both 
of them ate as if they had a campaign before 


GOING AHEAD FASTER AND FASTER. 1 75 

them, but neither Joshua Granger nor the old 
orderly sergeant had anything to say about 
farm matters, or cord-wood, or steam stump- 
pullers, while they were plying their knives and 
forks. The fact was that only their bodies 
were in that room, for their minds were march- 
ing around among old-time camps, and earth- 
works, and lines of battle, and the comings and 
the goings of tattered flags and of hoarse-voiced 
commanders. 

Gid liked that sort of talk and so did Marian, 
at any time, but specially just then. 

“ I’m glad you both got through without being 
killed,” remarked Mrs. Granger very sincerely. 

“ So am I,” said Elder Crane. “ Gideon, 
don’t you let one of them things get lost or 
burned up. Save ’em all till I come again. I’ll 
be preaching at the Valley all next month.” 

“ They’re coming right along regularly,” said 
Gid, “ and father ’ll have something to read 
evenings.” 

A queer sort of growl came from his father’s 


176 GOING AHEAD FASTER AND FASTER. 

end of the table, but part of it sounded like 
“ Keep ’em for the sergeant.” 

That afternoon was spent by the sun in a 
vigorous effort to warm up the face of all the 
land around Genentaha Hill. A great deal was 
done in that direction and hardly a trace of 
snow was left except in shadowed places. 
Besides, the sun walked all the way across the 
sky that day, from east to west, changing his 
ground continually, so that he could get at 
those shadowed patches of snow. Some of 
them he missed, but he made a clean job of 
the old stock-lot and the hennery. 

As for Gid, he shelled corn, while his father 
tinkered around the barn and hauled out plows 
and harrows and seemed not to know anything 
about the plans or the works of Joel Pepper 
or Farrell and Hotchkiss. He did not even 
tell Gid that another portable buzz-saw was to 
come with the stump-puller, or that Mr. Farrell 
was hiring extra teams to haul cord-wood as 
soon as the sun should improve the wheeling. 


GOING AHEAD FASTER AND FASTER. 1 77 

When evening came, everybody seemed to 
be very tired. Joshua Granger was always a 
kind man to his wife, and he made her go right 
to her own room as soon as the supper things 
were put away. He told Gid and Marian that 
they had done enough, for once, and they went 
up to their rooms as early as their mother did. 
About half an hour later, Gid put a book down 
with a slam and exclaimed : 

“ It sounds like blowing ! There never was 
such a crop of potatoes raised ! Anyhow, if 
that fellow did it, I’ll see if I can’t.” 

Marian, in her room, was talking to the wide, 
printed sheet of paper before her, and saying : 
“ She was actually in Paris when she wrote 
that letter. Seems to me I never really believed 
that there is such a country as Europe — not 
right now. She’s a girl no older’n I am and 
she’s there. O, how I wish I could get out of 
this, and see something !” 

Mrs. Granger, in her room over her story, 
was drawing a very long breath and saying : “ I 


178 GOING AHEAD FASTER AND FASTER. 

know just what they’d ought to do. They’d 
ought to ketch that feller and make him give 
up the money, and they’d ought to turn him out 
of the church, even if they can’t send him to 
jail. He’s a scamp! Now, I do want to see 
that next paper! ” 

She had to read something else after that 
and the paper was full of the very things she 
wished she “ had known before,” specially things 
about cooking and the right way to do up — “I do 
declare,” she said, “I’ve wasted more soap!” 

Perhaps that was true, but something had 
got into old Joshua Granger. He was fire-red 
in the face and was clinching his fist. 

“ No, sir,” he growled fiercely. “ It’s all a 
lie ! Hall’s brigade didn’t waver, and they 
didn’t make any gap in Doubleday’s line ! 
Old Goggles was one of the best generals we 
ever had, and he held the boys right up to the 
mark. I’ll show that to Sergeant Crane ! Gid 
mustn’t lose a leaf on ’em.” 

He said something savage about drill and 


GOING AHEAD FASTER AND FASTER. 1 79 


discipline, and what it did for the army, and 
what, moreover, it would do for boys, to pre- 
vent them from becoming slouches. It looked 
more than ever as if he were determined to do 
his whole duty by any raw young recruit under 
his hands. When he went upstairs, however, he 
did not confess to Mrs. Granger that he had 
been reading. 

All the literature that had been set at work 
in that house by the queer consequences of 
Gid’s new ideas, was as near to being a secret 
as is the spring of a watch. Like that, too, it 
ran down, at last, and the little household all 
went to bed. 


CHAPTER IX. 


SEED POTATOES AND ART AND PARLOR 
FURNITURE. 

ID and his father were standing near the 



woodpile, Wednesday morning, when 
Joel Pepper’s wagon, with another man in it 
and Mart Pepper, drove into the barnyard and 
began to load up. Not a word did the old 
farmer utter until he saw them drive into the 
stock-lot and begin to scatter their first cargo. 

“ Thick,” he said, after watching them a full 
minute. “They’re laying it on thick, but it’s . 
none of my business. Gid ” — 

Directions for half a dozen errands in the 
village followed, and Gid was compelled to set 
out at once, without going to inspect Joel Pep- 
per’s work or give any orders. He seemed very 


180 


POTATOES, ART AND FURNITURE. 181 


willing and cheerful about it, however, and he 
was hardly out of the gate before he exclaimed : 

“ Hurrah ! I was afraid I wouldn’t get a 
chance to go and see ’em, or to get anything 
out of the post-office.” 

It was an hour or so before his father’s er- 
rands were put into such a shape that he had 
a right to do his own, and then he was quickly 
in front of a great pile of lumber, looking into 
the face of a fat, jolly, twinkle-eyed old man. 

“ Deacon Johnson,” he said, “ what’s a fellow 
to do when he’s busted ? ” 

“ Have some other feller rake up the pieces 
and stick ’em together again,” said Deacon 
Johnson. “ Are you busted? ” 

“ If I ain’t yet, I guess I’m going to be,” 
replied Gid. “ It looks as if all my hens were 
going to set, one after another. There won’t 
be but about enough eggs to set ’em. What am 
I to do ’bout it ? Can’t pay what I owe you.” 

Deacon Johnson’s eyes were dancing. “ Will 
you give me a mortgage on the chickens ? ” 


1 82 POTATOES, ART AND FURNITURE. 

“ Guess I will,” said Gid, “ but that isn’t all. 
I want some seed potatoes.” 

“ Half-peck or peck ? ” asked the deacon, 
and then he had an experience. 

Gid told him about the swamp wood-lot and 
the corn it was to yield, and all about the stock- 
lot and the big crop of potatoes it was to bring 
up, and all the while he was telling it, Deacon 
Johnson was unable to stand still. He almost 
capered, it was so tremendously funny. He 
said “ Gid,” a dozen times, and he held his fat 
sides while he laughed. At the end of it all he 
shouted : 

“ Why, Gid Granger, you’re a farmer ! ” 

“Guess I am,” said Gid, “but what’ll I do 
for seed potatoes ? They’re a dollar and a half 
a bushel, such as I want.” 

“Gid,” said Deacon Johnson, “ I’ll stand by 
you. Take my new Early Miracle, many as you 
want. You agree to give me three bushels, out 
of the crop, for every bushel I give you now.” 

“ I’ll do it ! ” shouted Gid. 


POTATOES, ART AND FURNITURE. 


“ And a bushel of potatoes for every bushel 
of hen feed I let you have, and you needn’t be 
worried.” 

“ That’s just what I’d like to do,” said Gid, 
and he went away with a very grateful feeling 
towards Deacon Johnson. 

“ There isn’t anything slow about Gid,” re- 
marked the deacon, “ I don’t care how slow he 
looks. But, Dick” — to his clerk — “I was 
afraid we’d have a lot of them Early Miracle 
potatoes left over. Gid’s all right. Glad to 
help him, and I’d like to put out about a hun- 
dred thousand bushels more in the same way. 
It’d make a rich man of me. Hen feed, too.” 

Gid was almost at the post-office before the 
deacon completed a calculation of profits that 
he at once went into. Gid’s own mind was 
very much relieved, but it was very busy. He 
had to be spoken to twice before he heard his 
own name. 

“ Hullo ! ” he exclaimed. “ Is that you, 


Dr. Hotchkiss?” 


184 POTATOES, ART AND FURNITURE. 

“ Yes, Gid,” said the placid speculator. “ I’ve 
just come from the wood-lot. The stumps ’ll 
begin to fly to-morrow. The surveyor’s there 
now. There’s hardly any stumps on about a 
third of the patch. It’ll do to plow right away.” 

“Your wood won’t cost you much,” said Gid. 
“ Farrell says so.” 

“ He’s sold another hundred cords to the 
railway people, now he’s taken the stumps. 
That is, not cords of wood. They’re working 
’em up into ties. Paid us first-rate.” 

Gid was getting a lesson that he had not 
expected. 

“ There’s ‘plenty of money lying all ’round,” 
he said to himself as he walked away, “ if you 
only know enough to pick it up. I don’t seem 
to know enough. Father’s picked up some, but 
he lets it slip through his fingers.” 

That might be so, but Gid’s fingers held very 
tightly the several articles handed out to him 
by the post-office clerk. It was not time for 
another magazine, and only two of the weekly 


POTATOES, ART AND FURNITURE. 185 

journals were there, for the third came out 
later in the week, but there was another circu- 
lar and a letter, and a large parcel that had not 
been in the box. 

“ Hullo ! ” said Gid, in much wonder. “ Why, 
that isn’t for me — nor that, nor that — -‘Miss 
Marian Granger ’ — I declare ! She’ll be as- 
tonished, I guess. Anyhow,. I want to get 
home, but I must tell Rube Thompson about 
the seed potatoes.” 

That errand was easily performed, and Gid 
heard old Judge Hopper slap his hands, and 
his legs, and thump the table, and cough, and 
finally sneeze hard, while Rube was listening to 
all he had to tell. 

“ Rube ! Rube ! Rube ! ” exclaimed the old 
lawyer, after Gid had gone out. “ He’s good 
fun, but I’m afraid about old Josh. Trouble 
coming for him, if I’m not greatly mistaken.” 

It had not come when Gid reached the house, 
or if it had there were no visible signs of it. 
His father was once more away upon some 


1 86 POTATOES, ART AND FURNITURE. 


business or other which left Mrs. Granger look- 
ing sober and uneasy. She hardly noticed 
Gid’s entrance until he put the papers down 
before her. 

“ There’s your story, mother,” lie said. 

“You don’t say!” she exclaimed. “I’d 
a’most forgot to think about it. Glad you bore 
it in mind to go to the post-office. Well, yes, 
I’d kind o’ like to read ” — 

“ O, mother ! ” came at that moment from 
Marian. “Mother! Jenny Trumbull! She’s 
written me a letter. O, look, look ! A drawing 
book — studies — pencils — she is splendid ! ” 

“ She just is ! ” said Gid, for he too was ex- 
amining his sister’s prizes. 

That was precisely what they were — prizes 
won for her by her off-hand sketch of the head 
so like Sergeant-Elder Crane’s. Jenny Trum- 
bull’s letter explained it. She had shown the 
sketch to a friend of hers, an artist, and he 
and she had clubbed together with a lady who 
saw it. 





jenny Trumbull’s letter explained it. 






















































































POTATOES, ART AND FURNITURE. 189 

The drawing books, for there were several 
folios, were not span new and had cost nothing, 
but that did not hurt them. The only expense 
had been for drawing materials and for postage. 
Jenny’s letter was full of encouragement and in- 
struction, and so was a dry, formal, business- 
like page that came with it, from her friend the 
artist. 

Mrs. Granger looked at it all with a peculiar 
expression quivering around her mouth. 

“ Mattie,” said she at last, “ I never told any- 
body — not that I know of — but when I was ’bout 
your age I couldn’t any more help drawin’ Ag- 
gers of all kinds o’ things than I could help 
drawin’ my breath. The air was full of ’em 
and of music, too. You must kind o’ get it 
from me, Mattie. Take ’em upstairs, dear, and 
I’ll get dinner.” 

Mr. Granger did not return until about 
supper-time, so that the afternoon did a great 
deal for the hennery, but Mrs. Granger and 
Marian did not know exactly how the time 


190 


POTATOES, ART AND FURNITURE. 


went. He came in then, with a grim, set look 
upon his face, and it was not a good time to 
talk to him about art and literature. 

The uppermost thought in Marian’s mind, 
perhaps, was that it was Wednesday evening 
and that the quartette was to meet at Mrs. 
Judge Hopper’s to practice, and the table was 
hardly clear before a loud knock at the front 
door was answered by Gid and in walked Dea- 
con Crumb. He had come after Miss Granger, 
he said, with his buggy, for fear she might miss 
the quartette meeting, and she was so nearly 
ready that he did not have to wait five minutes. 
It was only about fifteen minutes later when 
there came another knock and this time it was 
Rube Thompson. He had come, he said, for a 
talk with Gid and to make sure that Miss 
Granger should come and practice with the 
quartette. He did not seem to have much to 
say, and he was hardly out of the house before 
Mr. Granger seemed to wake up. 

“ Gid,” he said suddenly, “ you go after 


POTATOES, ART AND FURNITURE. 191 

Marian when it’s time. She mustn’t be de- 
pendent on other folks for company.” 

“All right,” said Gid. “I’ll go for her.” 

After saying that he walked out of the sitting- 
room into the kitchen. There was a candle on 
the table and he picked it up. 

“ Father doesn’t half like Rube,” he said to 
himself. “ He doesn’t seem to more’n half like 
anybody, nowadays. He’s tinkering up things 
’round the barn — why doesn’t he tinker up some 
’round the house ? It’s about as much like a 
barn.” 

He said that while he was walking through the 
hall and into the parlor. It was a large, bare- 
looking, uncomfortably stiff kind of room. The 
black hair-cloth covered sofa and chairs were 
time-worn and shabby and the carpet was losing 
its pattern. 

“ No place for company,” said Gid, with a 
shiver. “ But we never have any,” and he 
walked out, put the candle back upon the 
kitchen table and went upstairs very slowly as 


192 POTATOES, ART AND FURNITURE. 

if yet another new idea were beginning to get 
hold of him. 

About a minute after Gid went out of the 
sitting-room, old Joshua Granger put down the 
magazine he had picked up and turned, with a 
long, hard breathing, to his wife. The grim, 
set look had gone from his face and a picture 
of pain was there instead. 

“ What is it, Joshua? ” she asked, in a voice 
which grew deep and tender and musical as she 
looked at him. 

It was several seconds before he said any- 
thing, but she waited patiently, getting pale all 
the while, and trying to smile. 

“ Maria,” he said, “ Pettibone and Rogers have 
failed, and I’m on their notes for ten thousand. 
Don’t know how much of it I’ll have to pay.” 

“ O, Joshua ! ” she exclaimed, and then she 
leaned forward and kissed him. 

There was a long talk after that, and at the 
end of it he said, “ I’m afraid we won’t have 
much to leave the children.” 


POTATOES, ART AND FURNITURE. 1 93 

“ We won’t tell them a word about it, till we 
know just how bad it is,” she said. “ Marian’s 
getting along wonderfully, and so’s Gid.” 

“ I don’t know what to make of Gid,” said 
he, “but I mean to do my duty by him, even if 
the farm and all have got to go.” 

Then there came a long silence. 

Deacon Crumb landed Marian at Judge Hop- 
per’s and drove away to bring Lib Herriman, 
and Marian followed Mrs. Hopper into the par- 
lor, eager to show her the splendid things that 
had come from Jenny Trumbull. 

Mrs. Hopper had kissed her at the door and 
now she kissed her half a dozen times more over 
Jenny’s presents. 

“ Now, Mattie,” she said, “ you take care of 
.yourself here. My help’s left me and I’ve got 
to be my own help. Make yourself at home 
and I’ll look in every now and then.” 

She hurried away and Marian was left alone 
with the costly furniture, the pictures, the books, 
and all the ideas and ghosts of ideas that seemed 


194 POTATOES, ART AND FURNITURE. 

to be flitting around among them. She had seen 
it all before, and yet she felt strange and half- 
afraid. 

The piano looked more like an acquaintance 
than did anything else. There was a lamp on 
it, and her fingers led her over and made her 
sit down and give them a chance at the keys. 
She had drummed a little before that on other 
people’s pianos, but it occurred to her that 
never until then had she been so all alone and 
at liberty to drum. She could touch the keys 
and listen to the effect of her touch, and touch 
again and listen. 

“ There ! ” she said. “ I could learn how. I 
know I could. O, how I do wish I had a piano 
of my own ! ” 

The music in her brain may have been getting 
into better relations with the music in her fin- 
gers, and every chord she struck correctly sent 
a thrill all over her. The hard part of it was 
that she could not keep out of her mind the 
idea of her own parlor at home, but her fingers 


POTATOES, ART AND FURNITURE. 


were having a real good time. They rattled on, 
hit or miss — mostly missing it — and they kept 
her so absorbed that she did not know how fast 
the time was going. 

“ I did not know that you ever had taken 
piano lessons, Miss Granger.” 

She suddenly arose, exclaiming : 

“ I never did, Rube — Mr. Thompson. I 
know nothing about it. Have Deacon Crumb 
and Lib Herriman ” — 

The clang of the door-gong served as an 
answer, and the rest of the evening was in the 
hands of the quartette, aided by Mrs. Hopper. 

It was a pleasant place to be in, with pleasant 
company, including the piano, and Marian knew 
nothing of what her father and mother were say- 
ing at home, or of what her brother was up to. 

Gid went down to the village a little early, to 
attend to some other business before going for 
his sister, and one of his errands took him to 
the house of Dr. Hotchkiss. The doctor was 
there, but he was very busy and almost ruffled. 


T96 POTATOES, ART AND FURNITURE. 

“ You’ll have to see Farrell about it,” he re- 
plied to Gid’s questions. “ He’s to ’tend to 
matters here. I’m going to the city, to ’tend to 
the other end of the business.” 

“Getting your house cleared out ?” said Gid, 
looking around him. “ Selling off?” 

“ Some things,” said the doctor, very nearly 
in a tone of irritation. “ Some I sha’n’t have 
time to sell. Don’t know what to do with the 
parlor furniture and the piano. I bought it all 
in a lump, at the Osgood auction, when he died. 
Got ’em less than half-price. Fine piano. 
Tip-top furniture. Cost him a thousand and 
more. Got it tor five hundred. Gave my note 
for it. Got to store it away, now, somewhere. 
Don’t know where.” 

“ Store it?” said Gid. “You can’t sell it so 
well, then, or rent the piano.” 

“ Won’t rent it,” said the doctor. “ Got to sell 
it. Glad to get three hundred for it. Gid, you’re 
sharp on a trade, sell it for me, while I’m gone. 
Things are bothering me awfully, just now.” 


POTATOES, ART AND FURNITURE. 


I 9 7 


“ All right,” said Gid. “ Send it all out to 
our house and I’ll store it in our parlor, where 
anybody that wants it can see it, and we won’t 
charge you a cent.” 

“ It’ll all be out there to-morrow, before noon,” 
exclaimed the doctor, “ and I’ll be out of town, 
too, by that time. It’s all correct, my boy. 
Sell it if you can. Tell Farrell about it. He’s 
as sound as a nut.” 

Gid closed that arrangement with some care, 
walked out of the house and went to Judge 
Hopper’s. He was not asked into the parlor, 
where the quartette were practicing, but into 
the sitting-room, and the old judge put away 
his paper and shook hands with him heartily. 
For he did not know how long, after that, Gid 
was under a queer impression that he was being 
cross-examined or, as he expressed it, “ Being 
pumped sand dry, and not know how ’twas done.” 

The old lawyer was evidently having a good 
time, at all events, and Gid was made very 
comfortable, with a cup of coffee and some 


198 POTATOES, ART AND FURNITURE. 

apples and krullers. He had altogether for- 
gotten to listen for the cessation of the singing 
in the parlor, while Judge Hopper was telling 
him a story about Daniel Webster and a great 
law-case, but at the end of that story Mrs. 
Hopper spoke. 

“Now, Gid,” she said, “you needn’t be in 
any kind of hurry, but Rube and Mattie have 
been gone these ten minutes. Take another 
kruller ? ” 

“ No, thank you,” said Gid, getting up a little 
suddenly. “ I’d no idea ’twas so late.” 

“ Come in again,” said Judge Hopper heartily. 
“ Come in any time. I want to know how the 
corn and potatoes are getting along. The hens, 
too. Every egg and chicken.” 

Gid promised to keep him posted, but he went 
off without saying a word to his law counsel 
about Dr. Hotchkiss and the piano. What he 
did say was all to himself, as he walked along: 
“ Guess I’ve got a customer for him. I’ll store 
it free of charge and he’ll get his money.” 


CHAPTER X. 


SKIRMISHES IN GID’S CAMPAIGN, 

G ID GRANGER met Rube Thompson in 
the road, coming back, that Wednesday 
evening, and gave him some directions for Joel 
Pepper, but when he reached the house all 
was quiet. Even after Gid went to bed, how- 
ever, nobody under that roof was asleep for 
a long time. 

The first thing that Joshua Granger said to 
his wife, next morning, was : 

“ Maria, don’t let’s tell the children. It may 
be months before anybody can lay a hand on the 
farm. Let Gid and Mattie go right along. I 
mean to work just as if nothing had happened.” 
“ It’s the best thing to do,” she said. 

He was a brave old fellow, and she thought 

i 99 


200 


SKIRMISHES IN GID S CAMPAIGN. 


it, and she said it. He came very near getting 
downstairs before either Gid or Marian, and he 
went right out to the barn to care for the stock. 
While he was out of the house, Gid took his 
mother into the parlor and had a really tremen- 
dous talk with her. 

“Your father won’t say a word against it, 
after it’s in,” she said, at last. “We won’t 
speak about it till then. Seems to me as if 
’twas all a kind of dream.” 

Old Joshua Granger was no dreamer. He 
came in to his breakfast, as usual, and he ate 
it, and then there was a hoarse ring of com- 
mand in his voice as he summoned Gid to come 
out with him and go ahead with the work of 
the farm. 

“We’ll see ’f we can’t beat Joel Pepper 
a-haulin’ manure and a-plowin’,” he said, but 
that was a thing not to be done, for the old 
stock-lot was close by and the other fields were 
at long distances. 

It was just after Gid and his father went out 


SKIRMISHES IN GID’S CAMPAIGN. 


201 


that Marian Granger had an idea that her mother 
was going crazy. 

“We must clean out the parlor,” said Mrs. 
Granger, “there’s company coming!” 

“ Mother,” said Marian, “ what can you 
mean ? ” 

“You’ll see, by and by,” said her mother, 
and she led the way to the parlor as if she were 
afraid that it might be on fire. 

The chairs and tables and the old sofa came 
out in a jiffy and were carried upstairs, and 
Marian did not get an intelligible answer to 
any question she asked. 

Then up came the old carpet, to be rolled 
away into the sitting-room closet, dust and all. 

“ Sweep ! Marian, sweep ! ” said Mrs. Granger. 
“ They’ll be here right away.” 

“ Mother ! ” exclaimed Marian, in a fever of 
fear and excitement. “Are you really going 
out of your mind ! I’ll go out and call father 
and Gid.” 

“ Stop, Marian, stop ! We must sweep the 


202 


SKIRMISHES IN GID’S CAMPAIGN. 


floor clean. I don’t know what’s got into us all. 
Gid’s been making another bargain. There they 
come ! ” 

Marian glanced through the open window 
and, sure enough, a large, loaded truck had 
halted at the gate and a man was coming in. 

Mrs. Granger made a swift dash to the door 
to meet him, followed by her daughter. 

“Bring ’em right in,” she said. “The carpet 
first. Now, Marian, we must have that right 
down. Gid says the rooms are of the same 
size. It’s bound to fit.” 

Marian knew that she must be sound asleep 
and that this was a very remarkable dream, but 
when that roll of extra-fine Brussels carpeting 
was tumbled in upon the parlor floor, she and 
her mother opened and spread it as if it had 
been a towel or a handkerchief. It was in its 
new place so quickly that it must have made it 
a little dizzy, and Mrs. Granger was tacking 
down one side of it while the men were landing 
chairs and things on the piazza. She had begun 


SKIRMISHES IN GID’S CAMPAIGN. 203 

upon the second side and Marian was stretching 
it for her, while the men were disputing as to 
the best method of lifting a piano off from a 
truck without spilling all the music and spoiling 
the shine of its rosewood. 

Rap, rap, went the hammer and in went the 
tacks, while Marian’s eyes refused to look out 
and see what more was coming. 

“There,’’ said Mrs. Granger, “that corner’s 
the place for it. We can finish tacking down 
the carpet afterwards.” 

Grunting and straining and scolding at one 
another, four strong fellows brought in that piano 
and put its legs on it and rolled it into its place. 

“We’ll put up the lookin’-glass for you,” said 
one of the men, “and screw on them patent 
curtain rods, and that’s all we’ve got to dew.” 

“ Do it,” said Mrs. Granger. “ Marian, you 
tack down that side, quick as you can. I’ll nail 
along on this side.” 

It seemed to make the men work harder to 
see the women work, and a great deal can be 


204 SKIRMISHES IN GID’s CAMPAIGN. 

done for one room in a short time by six pairs 
of strong hands, all doing their level best. 

“There,” said the man in charge of the job, 
as he finished one part of it. “That there’s as 
big a lookin’-glass as Judge Hopper’s, and the 
pianny’s as good as his’n. Them curtings is 
easy to put on and you can ’tend to that, and the 
sofy’ll just roll in. Good-mornin’, Mrs. Granger. 
You’re the spryest woman I ever seen.” 

She said good-morning to them all, while 
Marian was wishing that she could drive tacks 
hard enough to awaken herself from that too 
remarkable dream. She did not look up from 
them while her mother lugged in heavy chairs 
and a table and other articles, and the corner 
of the room was just finished when her last 
hammer-stroke fell heavily upon the thumb which 
had held the last tack. The sting in that thumb 
would have awakened anybody out of anything 
and it made the whole affair seem very real. 

“Come, now, Marian,” said her mother, “the 
carpet’s down. Help me in with the marble 


SKIRMISHES IN GID’S CAMPAIGN. 


205 


top of this table and with the sofa, and then 
we’ll hang the curtains and put those things on 
the mantel. I wish Gid had bargained for some 
paperin’ and paintin’. There isn’t any tellin’ 
what he won’t do next.” 

“Mother!” all but screamed Marian, “what 
does it all mean ? Where’d it come from ? ” 

“ Put ’em all to rights before your father comes 
in, that’s what I say,” replied her mother. 

“ If he’d been here, he wouldn’t have let ’em 
into the house, maybe. We’ll know what to do 
with all the old furniter.” 

That was all the satisfaction Marian obtained 
until everything was in its place. 

“ Mattie,” said Mrs. Granger then, “ open 
that pianny and sit down to it. I don’t keer 
if you can’t play. I’ve got to hear it or I won’t 
believe it’s actilly there.” 

So she also had been troubled in the same 
way with Marian, and it was all a dream to her. 

Marian’s hands trembled, but the piano came 
open and she sat down to it. 


206 skirmishes in gid’s campaign. 

“ O, mother, mother ! ” she said, “ I don’t 
know how. Jenny Trumbull ” — 

“You’re as good as Jenny Trumbull ever 
was,” snapped her mother. “ There’s no tellin’ 
how long that tiling’ll be here, but while it’s 
here you can drum on it.” 

Then followed as full an explanation as she 
could give, and while she was making it Marian’s 
fingers hovered ceaselessly back and forth over 
the keys, without touching them. 

“ Mother,” she said, “ I almost feel as if it 
were really mine,” and down came her fingers. 

“ Drum away ! Drum away ! ” said Mrs. 
Granger. “ I’ll go out and ’tend to the milk 
and get the dinner. It’ll be a-flyin’ in the face 
of Providence if you don’t get all you can out 
of that pianny.” 

Out she went and Marian remained at the 
piano, but it was nearly ten minutes, by the 
clock, before any sounds were heard. Then 
they came, softly, timidly, as if Marian’s fingers 
were afraid of the keys. 


SKIRMISHES IN GID’S CAMPAIGN. 207 

“ Oh ! oh ! oh ! ” she said to herself, “ isn’t it 
splendid !” 

Dinner time arrived, and Gid and his father 
came in and everything was ready for them and 
Mrs. Granger was in the kitchen, busy around 
the stove. 

“ Maria ! ” exclaimed old Joshua Granger, 
“ what’s that ? ” 

“O, dear me!” she said, “that’s Marian. 
She’s a practicin’ — in the parlor.” 

On toward the parlor through the hall strode 
Joshua Granger, closely followed by Gid and 
his mother, and the door flew open at his touch. 
The sound of the piano had ceased and there 
was his daughter, with her head bowed upon 
her arms. 

“ Gideon,” said the old man, “ what does all 
this mean ? How did it get here ? ” 

“Why,” said Gid, “that’s Marian and that’s 
her piano. That is, it’s hers as long as it’s here, 
and it doesn’t cost us a cent.” 

“ You don’t say,” said his father, with a gasp 


V 


208 skirmishes in gid’s campaign. 

/ 

and with a sharp twang in his voice. “ Tell me 
what it means, Gid! ” 

Rapid and clear was the explanation, and 
Mr. Granger heard it in silence. While it was 
going fin he stared around the room at elegance 
and luxury and extravagance never there before, 
and when all was finished he turned and walked 
out of the room. 

“ Ruined ! ruined ! ” he muttered fiercely. 
“ And somehow I don’t seem to see how I can 
stop it. Going all to pieces ! Well, let it go ! ” 

It was as if that one corner of elegance in 
his house made the old man feel all the more 
keenly the sting of the disaster which was com- 
ing upon him. It did not break or subdue 
him, however, and he listened with grim dis- 
approval to all that Marian and her mother had 
to say concerning Jenny Trumbull’s presents. 
He examined them. He was evidently proud 
of Marian, but he saw no good in it. 

“ Maria,” he remarked, “ she’s got to work for 
a living. It’s no use setting of her up.” 


SKIRMISHES IN GID’s CAMPAIGN. 


209 


There was a great deal more said all around 
that evening, but Joshua Granger and his wife 



“she’s got to work for a living,” said he. 




bravely refrained from telling the children any- 
thing about the trouble that was coming. 


210 SKIRMISHES IN GID’S CAMPAIGN. 

The next morning Joel Pepper had a man 
plowing in the stock-lot, while he went on with 
his hauling. Day followed day, and every day 
of decent weather was made the most of. The 
entire face of Gid’s half of the barnyard was 
hauled out, and about a foot deep of the surface 
of the hen-lots. It was a great humbug, to the 
mind of Joshua Granger, but then a bargain was 
a bargain and he could not interfere. What wor- 
ried him even more was the enormous amount 
of harrowing performed, and Joel Pepper felt 
just the same about it, even while doing the 
work and getting paid for it. 

“ Gid,” said Marian, on one of those March 
days, when he came in to dinner, “did you 
know we had thirty-two hens setting with what 
mother let you have, of hers, and we don’t get 
half a dozen eggs a day ? ” 

“ I wish they’d all set,” said Gid. “ It’ll take 
a grist of chickens to pay for that piano and the 
furniture.” 


“ O, Gid ! ” she exclaimed, “ is that your idea ? ” 


SKIRMISHES IN GID’S CAMPAIGN. 


21 I 


“Perhaps it won’t work,” he said, “but we’ll 
pay up, somehow. Farrell’s getting along awful 
fast with that wood-lot. He says he’ll have corn 
on every acre of it. The seed potatoes’ll be here, 
this afternoon, and we’ve got to cut ’em up.” 

A little before supper-time, that day, Joshua 
Granger stood by the fence of the land he had 
leased to his own son, through Rube Thompson. 
A man he did not know was driving a horse* and 
harrow over a ploughed part of it. 

“ That makes four times I’ve seen him go over 
that same patch,” grumbled the old farmer. 
“ What sod there is’ll be torn to bits. It’s as 
soft as muck, the whole on it. It’ll take all of 
Gid’s money to pay for that scrape and all of 
mine to pay for Pettibone and Rogers’s failin’. 
We’ve got to break up and go somewhere else, I 
s’pose, but I’ve kep’ my word and I’ll keep it.” 

He drew his breath hard and when he went 
into the house he was evidently under some 
greater excitement than usual. It was not quite 
supper time and his coming had not been looked 


212 


SKIRMISHES IN GID’S CAMPAIGN. 


for. Nothing, therefore, had been prepared for 
him to look at, and yet he stopped short at the 
kitchen door and looked. 

“ Maria ! ” was all he said. 

“ Joshua,” she replied, without looking up, 
“ Gid’s potatoes have got to be planted. Rube’s 
come to see ’bout the quartette and the potatoes 
and to take tea with us and so has the Elder.” 

That might be, but there was the old orderly 
sergeant, and there was the young lawyer, and 
there were Gid and his sister and his mother, 
each with a knife in one hand and an Early 
Miracle potato in the other. 

“You see, father,” said Gid, “ we’ve got twelve 
acres to put in.” 

“It’s all right, Josh,” said the Elder, clipping 
a tuber in twain. “I’m on Gid’s side in this 
’ere scrimmage. He’s bound to win, if his 
supplies hold out. Farrell’s a putting in his 
corn with one of them patent droppers and 
both his buzz-saws are working up stumps to 
get ’em out of the way.” 


SKIRMISHES IN GID’S CAMPAIGN. 


213 


“Farrell’s going to make money out of that 
job,” remarked Rube. 

“ Hope he will. Hope he will,” said the old 
farmer. “ Now, Maria, let’s have supper. I 
never did see just the like o’ this before.” 

Nobody ever had, in that kitchen, and the 
whole scene changed in a twinkling. Bending 
over potatoes, or something, had made Rube 
Thompson red in the face, but Mr. Granger 
shook hands with him almost as if he liked 
him, remarking that farm work would do him 
good. 

Marian was a little misty about the course of 
events from that moment until they were seated 
at the table, but Gid was not. He had his eyes 
about him and his ears too. 

“Mother,” he said, “ain’t I glad Elder Crane 
was here ! ” 

“ Hush, Gid,” she said, “ hear that ” — 

“ Sergeant,” her husband was saying, “ the 
bugs’ll take the crop. It isn’t of any manner 
of use ” — 


214 SKIRMISHES IN GID’s CAMPAIGN. 

“No, they won’t,” replied Elder Crane. “Gid 
told me. He’s hired Mart Pepper and three 
other boys to patrol that field, soon’s the bugs 
begin to scout around. Plenty of ammunition 
— Paris green, you know — pick off every bug 
at short range. Gid isn’t any kind of slouch. 
He’s ’listed for the war, he is.” 

The shadows on old Joshua Granger’s face 
lifted a little, at the supper table, although a 
brief cloud followed the news that the quartette 
was to meet in his own parlor, that evening, 
and that Mrs. Hopper and her husband were 
coming and that Mrs. Short and her daughter 
were coming over. It made him wince to think 
of what they wpuld find there, but he braced 
his nerves against the trial and did not say a 
word about it. 

That was a remarkable evening at the Granger 
homestead. Before it was over, Judge Hopper 
called its owner away back into the corner of 
the sitting-room to say to him : 

“The sheriff’ll be here to-morrow, Mr. Granger, 


SKIRMISHES IN GID’s CAMPAIGN. 


215 


and he’ll levy on everything, hit or miss, but he 
won’t disturb anything. Not before next fall or 
winter. You can just go right along. He can’t 
touch Gid’s crops and we’ll see what we can do 
for the rest of the property.” 

“ I can’t do a thing but wait,” said the old 
farmer dolefully. “ I’m in the trap and there 
isn’t any way out.” 

“ We’ll see about that,” cheerfully replied the 
lawyer. “ It’s a long lane that has no turning. 
It’s good for you that Pettibone and Rogers 
are so awfully tangled up.” 

“Law’s an awful thing, anyhow,” said Joshua 
Granger. “ Does Rube seem to know much 
about it? ” 

“Brightest young lawyer in the whole county,” 
exclaimed Judge Hopper. “ I’m going to make 
him a partner, by and by.” 


CHAPTER XI. 


WHAT THE HENS DID FOR THE PIANO. 

ID GRANGER’S evenings upstairs with 



his books and papers brought yet another 
trial to his father, to Joel Pepper and his men, 
and even to some of the neighbors who stopped 
and stared at that field as they went by. Joshua 
Granger stared at it very hard indeed, the first 
time he saw them planting potatoes on a part 
of it where the excessive harrowing had ceased. 

“ Nonsense ! ” he exclaimed. “ I know what 
that is. It’s one of them patent humbug fer- 
tilizers. Gid’s throwin’ away all his money and 
all his crop with it.” 

“ Guess not, father,” said Gid, behind him. 
“ That’s the Lightning Fertilizer. It’d make 
potatoes grow on a sand-heap.” 


216 


WHAT THE HENS DID FOR THE PIANO. 


21 7 


“ They cost more money ! ” said his father. 
“ How’ll you pay for it ? ” 

“ Pay ! Why, it will pay for itself ” — began 
Gid. 

“ Guess it won’t, then,” interrupted the old 
man. “ You and Rube ! What does a lawyer 
know ’bout farmin’ ? Well, you come along 
with me to the cornfield.” 

He did not know that his wife and daughter 
had put aside almost everything else that day, 
even the piano, and were busily cutting Early 
Miracle potatoes, although previous days and 
evenings had given them a fair stock on hand 
ready for use. 

Neither did he know, until evening, of a visit 
made by a sharp, business-like man, who made 
a list of things in and around the house that he 
might some day have to sell, for he was the 
county sheriff. He was very polite, and Mrs. 
Granger and Marian were polite to him, but he 
would not stay to dinner. 

“ I knew he was coming,” said Marian to her 


2 18 WHAT THE HENS DID FOR THE PIANO. 

mother. “ Rube told me all about it, and Judge 
Hopper told Gid.” 

So the coming trouble had not been “kept 
from the children,” after all, and Gid and 
Marian had worked right along in spite of it. 

Gid heard more about the uselessness of 
fertilizers and fancy farming that forenoon while 
at work in the cornfield, far away from the 
other work he was aching to take a share in, 
and he had something to show his father when 
they came in to dinner. It was one of his 
mischievous papers, and he brought it with a 
finger pointed at a particular column. 

“There,” he said, “just look at that! ” 

Slowly, sorrowfully, the old man read, and 
then crumpled the paper and threw it down. 

“ Six hundred bushels of potatoes from one 
acre ? ” he snarled. “ Doesn’t everybody know 
that’s a lie ? Never was any such thing done 
on this earth.” 

“ Three or four of them took their affidavits 
that they did it,” said Gid sturdily. 


WHAT THE HENS DID FOR THE PIANO. 


221 


“ You won’t do it, anyhow,” said his father. 
“ I don’t want to hear another word about it, 
but it isn’t my field, this year.” 

It was after supper, when he and his wife 
were alone in the sitting-room, that she told him 
of the sheriff’s visit. 

“ Maria,” said he, “ everything’s a-going.” 

“Joshua,” said Mrs. Granger, almost cheer- 
fully, “ just do you put your trust in Providence 
and wait. If worst comes to worst we can get 
a living.” 

“ Gid’s a-wastin’ every cent he made,” said 
he. “ Throwin’ his money away on moonshine. 
Been readin’ trash in them books and papers. 
I knew how it would be.” 

There was a long talk between them, and all 
the while it was going on Gid was poring over 
his printed wisdom in his room, and Marian, in 
hers, had forgotten even the sheriff in the fasci- 
nation of a sheet of Bristol board, a crayon, 
and one of the sketches sent to her by Jenny 
Trumbull. 


2 22 WHAT THE HENS DID FOR THE PIANO. 

The weather out of doors grew better and 
better after that, but Gid discovered that 
nothing that had already happened or that was 
likely to come had at all softened his father. 
The old soldier seemed rather to feel as if he 
were fighting a lost battle to the very end and 
that everybody under his command must fight 
it out with him and according to his notion of 
the right way to lose it — for he had no idea at 
all of winning it. He grew moody and harsh 
and exacting. 

Gid had never been a fat boy, but during the 
remainder of that spring he was manifestly 
growing thin. As the days grew longer, he 
found time at each end of them to go and take 
looks all over his potato field and even over 
the cornfield, where Mr. Farrell had done 
wonderfully. 

The difficulties there had been much less than 
had been supposed, however, and no miracle 
had been required. A deep ditch, cut a short 
distance through a natural bank, with a couple 


WHAT THE HENS DID FOR THE PIANO. 


2 23 


of ditches ploughed across the land, had left it 
as dry as any other part of the farm, while only 
a third of it had carried any stumps to speak of. 

Gid did not guess how many thoughts, of all 
sorts, had traveled through the mind of his 
father when he, too, from time to time, went to 
look at that field and then returned to study the 
appearance of those Early Miracle potatoes. 

Perhaps Gid’s evenings helped to make him 
thin, and it may be that he was doing more 
thinking than was good for him. At all events 
he was. very quiet, and his mother said that he 
had gained a full half-inch in height and she 
hoped he wouldn’t get stoop-shouldered. 

Mrs. Granger never had been thin, and now- 
adays she even complained of her weight. She 
said it wouldn’t do for her to get any heavier. 
It would hinder her from flying ’round as she 
would like to, and there was more to do now- 
adays than there ever had been before. The 
cows were doing well and she was making more 
butter and Gid’s big coop fairly swarmed and 


224 WHAT THE HENS DID FOR THE PIANO. 


ran over with chickens, and he had all sorts of 
ideas as to what ought to be done for them. 
She and her husband wondered how he got 
his feed for them, but it came right along and 
the broods throve exceedingly. 

As for Marian, neither she nor anybody else 
knew exactly how her time got away. She 
seemed to be in a new world, full of new people. 
First of them, perhaps, were the new chickens, 
and she said she knew every one of them. 
Next to the poultry that she hoped would pay 
for the piano, were the new acquaintances that 
came in her music books and sketch books, 
and after these were quite a list of young and 
old human beings, met at Mrs. Hopper’s and 
elsewhere, because of the quartette. Some of 
these, indeed, were young gentlemen and Rube 
Thompson twice missed coming home with her 
to speak to Gid about something or other. 
After that he took better care, decidedly. 

There was not very much housework to do, 
even with Mrs, Granger watching her daughter 


WHAT THE HENS DID FOR THE PIANO. 225 

conscientiously, to prevent piano practice and 
penciling from interfering with really important 
duties. Marian grew remarkably alert and in- 
dustrious under such a pressure, and she did 
not know how good for her it was to be com- 
pelled to practice the same exercises over and 
over, without any new music. Drawing materials 
would use up, however, and, during the first half 
of May, Gid did not get one chance to go to the 
village. The Granger family would hardly have 
known what was going on if it had not been for 
Mrs. Short and Elder Crane. Mrs. Short had 
to come over every other day to look at those 
chickens and to tell the news, and the old orderly 
sergeant seemed disposed to almost haunt that 
potato patch. He fairly pestered Joel Pepper 
and his men every time he made his appearance 
there. Joel said that the Elder sat up all one 
night waiting for a hill that looked as if it were 
going to start, and that he had counted every 
sprout in the field, now that they were above 
ground. 


226 WHAT THE HENS DID FOR THE PIANO. 


The sergeant was a comfort to Gid with his 
potato reports, but obtained very little comfort 
from his old comrade, for Joshua Granger 
seemed to take no interest in a crop that was 
to be eaten up, he said, by the potato bugs and 
also by its own expenses. 

It was the third Wednesday in May, and Gid 
was free all the forenoon, for his father had gone 
off hurriedly, without leaving any orders behind 
him. 

“ Six dozen of eggs ! ” said Gid, as he set out 
for the village. “ They’re down to thirteen 
cents, but that’s something. I’ll go to the 
post-office.” 

Seventy-eight cents were in his pocket there- 
fore when he came out of Crumb & Corrigan’s, 
and it was a great deal of money for a young 
farmer with so little to sell. 

“ Pack’ge f’r you at ’he xpr’ss off’s,” shouted 
a small boy that belonged to that establishment, 
and Gid said he would go and get it, but he 
did not believe it was there until he went and 


WHAT THE HENS DID FOR THE PIANO. 227 


saw it. He did not exactly believe it, even 
then, for it was marked : 

“Miss Marian Granger — X 25 cts.” 

“ Quarter, Gid,” said the express clerk, and 
Gid paid it. 

“Quarter — box-rent,” said the clerk at the 
post-office three minutes later, but he held out 
through the window the May magazine, the 
papers for three weeks, some circulars, and a 
roll of things and a letter for Marian. 

Gid paM the quarter and turned around to 
meet the jolly face of Deacon Johnson. 

“ Let me have a quarter, Gid,” said the good 
man, “ I want to pay my box-rent, too, and I 
haven’t a cent with me.” 

Gid let him have it and hurried out. 

“ Only three cents left,” he said to himself. 
“ Can’t buy any postage stamps this time, nor 
any paper for Marian. She’s got a grist of 
things, though.” 

So he told her when he met her at the door of 
the house, and her mother added : 


2 28 WHAT THE HENS DID FOR THE PIANO. 


“ Sakes alive, Marian, what can it be ? ” 
It was not altogether easy for Marian to 
open that mysterious express package, or the 
roll from the post-office, or the letter, and to 
find any kind of answer. Her fingers trembled 
and her lips trembled and she hesitated, and 
the letter came open first. 

“ Read it, Mattie, read it,” exclaimed her 
mother, as if urging were needful. 

“ Mother ! ” said Marian, as her eyes ran 
along the lines. “It’s from Jenny Trumbull. 
She meant to have written before. She’s been 
so busy. O, mother ! She’s going to spend 
her summer in Europe ! She and Mr. Holcombe, 
the artist that sent me the books. Jenny is to 
be Mrs. Holcombe ! Her wedding cards. She 
has sent me a pile of her old music and lesson 
books and drawings. And they want me to 
visit them when they come back, and to enter 
the Institute in the city, and to take lessons, 
and to graduate. Mother ! ” 

“ Why, Mattie,” said her mother, “ you 


WHAT THE HENS DID FOR THE PIANO. 229 

needn’t cry about it. You’d rather ought to 
believe that Mr. Holcombe’s a real good man. 
He must be rich, too, but it’s an awful extrava- 
gant thing to go to Europe, and some people 
never get back.” 

“ O, mother ! ” shouted Marian again, for 
Gid’s knife had opened the express package 
and its treasures were becoming visible. 

“ Mattie,” said Mrs. Granger, “ I’m glad 
you’ve got ’em, and she’s a good girl, and I’m 
glad she’s got him, but these are awful times 
for us, and w r e mustn’t give up too much to sech 
things as them. We don’t know what’s a-coming 
to us, Mattie.” 

There did not seem to be any good and easy 
response to that, and Marian picked up her 
treasures and carried them into the parlor. 

She put them down upon the music-stand by 
the piano and stood still and looked at them. 
Then she looked around her. It seemed to her 
that the very walls of that old room were at war 
with all the elegance* crowded into it. 


230 WHAT THE HENS DID FOR THE PIANO. 


“ Mattie,” said Mrs. Granger, “ you leave 
them things there, now, and come out with me 
and help get dinner. Your father’ll be home 
any minute. Gid, you just put away them 
papers. There’s a new story a-beginning, and 
I’ll take a look at it by and by, but it ’pears to 
me as if I didn’t care to.” 

“ Never you mind, Mattie,” almost whispered 
Gid. “ I haven’t got but three cents left, but I 
found out what to do with all them chickens.” 

He did not give her any explanation just 
then, and in a few minutes more it was too late, 
for his father returned and he must have brought 
bad news with him, for he had laid out more 
work than he and Gid could do in all summer, 
and he talked it over while they were eating 
dinner. They all listened, and Mrs. Granger, 
for some reason, did not say a word to him 
about the express package or about Gid’s errand 
to the village. 

The remainder of that day went by very 
much as usual, and so did the remainder of the 


WHAT THE HENS DID FOR THE PIANO. 2 3 T 


month, and all of June, and the Fourth of July 
arrived at last, without bringing any relaxation 
to the stern resolution of old Joshua Granger, 
or any relief to Gid, except what he obtained 
from chuckling over the marvelous appearance 
of his crops. If ever a young recruit was put 
under thorough drill and discipline, the Granger 
house and farm had a perfect specimen to show 
that season. 

The day before the Fourth Gid came in from 
a hot and toilsome day’s work and stood in the 
kitchen door, looking wistfully at his hennery 
and potato-lot. 

“ Maria,” he heard his father say in the 
sitting-room, “ I’ve closed the wood account 
with Farrell and he’s nigh paid up. Four hun- 
dred cords, two dollars a cord, eight hundred 
dollars. The hay brought me a’most five hun- 
dred. Wheat a little less. Oats a hundred. 
I’d have two thousand in bank, Maria, if it all 
hadn’t got to go, but what do you think about 
Gid ? ” 


232 WHAT THE HENS DID FOR THE PIANO. 


“ I don’t know. What is it ? ” she asked. 

“ He’d have had four hundred himself, but 
nigh three quarters of it’s gone to Joel Pepper 
for work. He owes me his rent yet, and he 
hasn’t paid for his seed nor for his fertilizer. 
Maria, that scrape’s going to cost more’n fifty 
dollars an acre, before it’s all settled. I never 
heard tell of sech a squanderin’ of money. It’s 
all gone, but a hundred came to me for the 
manure, and I’ll get the rent back.” 

“ Joshua,” said she, “ that’s more’n you’ve 
had from that twelve acres this five year. I do 
hope we haven’t got to lose the farm, and I 
do hope Gid’ll make somethin’.” 

“ We’ve raked and scraped, Maria,” said he, 
“ and we’ve worked hard and we’ve lived close. 
I’ve done wrong, Maria, but just now I was 
thinkin’ of Gid and Mattie. That there piano’ll 
have to go to some of Hotchkiss’s creditors, or 
I’m mistaken. Can’t we shut off them papers 
from cornin’ ? ” 

“ Guess you’d better let their time run out,” 


WHAT THE HENS DID FOR THE PIANO. 233 

she said. “ They won’t do any hurt with what’s 
left of it. Sorry ’bout the pianny and the 
furniter. I was kind o’ gettin’ used to it. So 
was Mattie. So was folks that come since 
’twas here.” 

“ It’s nothing to us, if everything else is 
a-going,” he said, but it was supper time and 
the talk was cut off. 

Gid had his own ideas about the piano, but as 
yet they were only a trouble to him. He went 
to the village, next day, and saw some fireworks 
and heard a great deal of noise, but he had no 
money for any celebration, although no other 
boy in the village was farming it on the scale 
that he was. He got sick of it all early and 
came home. 

“Gid,” said Marian, when she met him at the 
gate, “ did you get the papers ? ” 

“Yes,” he responded a little bluely, “and 
the advertisements are all in, but I didn’t get 
any answers. May be it won’t work at all.” 

“ Perhaps it’s too soon,” she suggested. 


234 WHAT THE HENS DID FOR THE 'PIANO. 


“ Father and Elder Crane looked into the 
coops to-day, and I heard them wondering 
what all the new boxes were for. Father 
couldn’t guess where they came from.” 

Of course not, for a lot of small slat-work 
crates had been put together by lantern-light in 
the evenings and by dawnlight in the mornings. 
More of that work was done that very evening, 
while the two old soldiers were talking about 
old battles, but it was done by a boy and girl 
who had little faith in an experiment they were 
making. It was therefore heavy-hearted work 
and part of the old men’s talk was heavy- 
hearted also. It related to a campaign now 
going on. 

“Josh,” said the orderly sergeant at last, 
“don’t surrender your farm. Hold the fort 
till the last cartridge is used up.” 

“ I’ll do that, Sergeant,” said Josh, “ but the 
sheriff can’t be beat, you know.” 

While they were discussing the apparent 
disaster to Joshua Granger’s prospects, Gid’s 


WHAT THE HENS DID FOR THE PIANO. 235 

hammer tapped away, out in the coop, till he 
grew weary. 

“ Mattie,” said he, “ that’s enough till we 
hear from somebody. Anyhow, that piano’s 
got to be paid for. It sha’n’t get away from us.” 

“ O, Gid, I hope not ! ” she said, almost ready 
to cry. “ I don’t have much time to practice, 
but Lib Herriman says I’m getting along won- 
derfully. If I can only keep it ! ” 

“ We’ll do it, somehow,” said Gid, but he was 
evidently feeling a little blue. 

Several anxious days followed — a whole week 
of them — and then Gid came back from the vil- 
lage late one afternoon with no less then ten 
letters in his pocket. He and Marian had a 
tremendously private talk, followed by another 
with Mrs. Granger. 

“ Mother,” said Gid pleadingly, in the course 
of it, “ father said he didn’t care to hear about 
hens.” 

“Thirty dollars is a great deal of money, 
Gideon,” she said. “ He needs every cent.” 


236 WHAT THE HENS DID FOR THE PIANO. 

“ But this doesn’t belong to him, it belongs to 
Dr. Hotchkiss for the piano,” he urged, and he 
stuck to his point until she yielded. 

That night Gid and Marian spent a late hour 
in the hennery. When an express wagon came 
to the gate next morning, after Gid and his 
father had gone to their work, Mrs. Granger 
and her daughter delivered to the driver of it 
ten small crates, each of which contained a 
young rooster and a pair of pullets, and was 
addressed to one person or another who had 
answered Gid’s advertisement of “ sets of three 
fowls, thorough-bred Plymouth Rocks or Po- 
lands, price three dollars a set.” 

It was by no means a “fancy price,” and 
more letters came, day after day, until sixty sets 
had been sold and there were no more to send, 
but about as many young roosters had been 
sold separately at only fifty cents apiece. 

“ Marian,” said Gid, “ hurrah ! ” 

“ Mother,” said Marian, “ he is just splendid ! 
He says the piano is safe ! ” 


CHAPTER XII. 


how gid’s crop was gathered for him. 



HE Early Miracle potatoes did an immense 


amount of hard work under ground, and 
by the first week in August some of them were 
ready to come out and go to market. It was a fact 
that warmed the very heart of Gid Granger, but 
that also made it thump with excitement and 
anxiety concerning the result so soon to be 
known. He knew, too, that the crisis and 
crash in his father’s affairs was close at hand 
and that it could no longer be put off, and that 
there were special reasons why Dr. Hotchkiss 
had not visited the Hill for so long a time. 

He was thinking about it all at home, one 
very hot day when his father was absent, and 
a loud knock at the door fairly startled him, as 


2 37 


238 how gid’s crop was gathered. 

if he were growing nervous. He went and 
opened the door, and there stood the placid 
speculator, holding out his hand and smiling. 

Gid shook hands and asked him into the par- 
lor, but hardly was he there before his errand 
came right out. He was almost severe in his 
look and tone when he said : 

“ Gid, it’s high time they were paid for ! ” 

“ Doctor,” said Gid quietly, “ I was just wait- 
ing for you to come. Sign that.” 

It was the bill of sale he had put into Gid’s 
hands, with the goods, for Gid to sign if he sold 
them. 

“ Have you got the money, Gid ? ” he asked, 
with the air of a man who was saving something 
he feared he had lost. 

“There’s an order on Farrell for a hundred 
and ten dollars ; all that’s due me. Here’s a 
hundred and ninety. That squares it. The 
piano and furniture are paid for.” 

Gid held it out and the doctor took it and 
signed the paper. 


how gid’s crop was gathered. 239 

“ I’d rather have had it all in cash,” he said 
regretfully. “Glad to get some. Didn’t know 
where I could. Farrell’s hard up. Good- 
morning, Gid. All right. I must go.” 

So he did, leaving upon Gid’s mind an im- 
pression that Farrell had already let his partner 
have as much money as he meant to. As soon 
as the door closed behind him, the bill of sale 
was filled up with the name of Miss Marian 
Granger, and she was still looking at it, hardly 
able to believe it, when a man drove to the gate 
in a buggy. 

“ You’re the best brother ! ” exclaimed Marian. 

“ And that’s Constable Heiser,” said Gid. 
“Glad he didn’t come any sooner, and I’m glad 
that bill of sale is dated away back last March.” 

Dr. Hotchkiss’s haste was explained. The 
constable was hunting for any property belong- 
ing to him, and he seemed very much put out 
when shown the written evidence that this par- 
ticular lot had long since passed beyond the 
reach of the doctor’s old debts, He had to give 


240 how gid’s crop was gathered. 

it up and get into his buggy, and Gid and 
Marian were still discussing that important 
piece of paper when the front door opened 
again, went to with a bang, there came a sound 
of heavy feet behind them and then a deep, 
stern voice demanded : 

“ Gideon, what was Heiser here for ? What’s 
become of all your chickens ? ” 

There was a storm of wrath on the face of 
old Joshua Granger. All his troubles were fer- 
menting within him to sour his temper and to 
blind his judgment. 

“ Speak right out, Gid,” he added. “ You 
and Mattie both. I want to know what’s going 
on in this house. It’s my house yet. I won’t 
have all this nonsense. Out with it ! ” 

“ It’s all right, father,” said Gid cheerfully, 
for he was really feeling quite cheerful. “ The 
chickens are all sold. Got a dollar apiece for 
most of ’em and fifty cents for the rest.” 

“ Dollar apiece ? They ain’t worth it ! You 
didn’t do it ! ” exclaimed his father. 


HOW GID S CROP WAS GATHERED. 


241 


“ Heiser was here,” continued Gid, “ to hunt 
for anything belonging to Dr. Hotchkiss, and I 
had to prove to him that Mattie had paid in 
full for her piano and her furniture. Look at 
that.” 

He looked at the bill of sale. Then he looked 
at Gid, and then at Marian, and the cloud on 
his face came and went and came again. 

“Joshua,” said Mrs. Granger, at his elbow, 
“it’s just so. The chickens all went away in 
them boxes to folks that writ for ’em. Gid 
advertised ’em in his papers.” 

“ It’s just so much more money thrown 
away,” said Mr. Granger angrily. “ Sheriff 
Green ’ll take every stitch of it.” 

“ No, he won’t, Joshua,” said she positively. 
“ I told him they belonged to Dr. Hotchkiss, 
and he didn’t list ’em.” 

“ You’d ought to have told him the truth, 
Maria,” replied he, with stern disapproval. 
“ They wasn’t his.” 

“ They were till they were paid for, father,” 


242 HOW GID’S CROP WAS GATHERED. 

said Gid. “ Anyhow, they’re Mattie’s, and 
Heiser can’t take them and Green can’t.” 

“ Everything in this house,” shouted old 
Joshua Granger, “ and everything ’round it, and 
all that’s on the farm, and the farm, ’ll go to pay 
any honest debt or keep any contract of mine. 
There won’t be any kind of holdin’ back.” 

Marian had turned away into the parlor. 
All the glow had gone from her heart and from 
her face, and she hid that in the folds of one of 
the curtains which had been paid for with the 
price of the chickens she had watched and tended. 

“Joshua,” interposed Mrs. Granger, “Gid 
and Marian have got some rights. His coops 
and chickens belonged to him.” 

“ Do they ? ” said he. “ It’s time he waked 
up to some things, then. I’ve sold the potatoes 
for him. Got an awful high price. Hundred 
dollars an acre, just as they lie. Thirty dollars 
an acre for his share in Farrell’s corn. Jim 
Vedder’s taken ’em and Pettibone and Rogers’ 
creditors have ’greed to take his notes.” 


HOW gid’s crop was gathered. 


Poor Gid Granger ! He was unable to say 
one word for a moment. He knew his father’s 
iron honesty and unflinching adherence to any 
promise he might make. 

“ Notes ? ” he faltered at last. “ Did Jim 
Vedder give his notes ? ” 

“ He said he would,” said the old man. 
“ He’s coming, this evening, to close the 
bargain.” 

“ Father,” burst forth from Gid, “ when he 
comes, you tell him to go and see Judge Hopper 
and Rube Thompson. They told me they were 
going to sell their potatoes to a firm in the city 
that proposes to dig ’em, and not to trouble 
them about anything except to measure ’em.” 

“ Their potatoes ? ” growled the old man, a 
sudden light dawning upon him. “ They claim 
to own them potatoes really, and to’do what 
they please with ’em, and with the corn ? Why, 
it’s all your’n, and all your’n is mine, to say 
what’ll be done with it.” 

“That’s just so,” said Gid, “but if Jim 


244 H0W gid’s crop was gathered. 


Vedder touches anything belonging to Rube 
or Judge Hopper, they’ll have him locked up. 
He won’t get out again right away either, and 
I’ll tell him so.” 

“Gid!” said his mother enthusiastically, “I 
am with you this time ! So’ll your father be 
when he’s time to think of it. He can’t sign 
away everything on account of Pettibone and 
Rogers.” 

“ Maria ! ” shouted her husband. “ Are you 
a-teachin’ ’em rebellion ? ” 

“ He ain’t rebellin’ ’gainst me,” she replied 
quietly, “and he isn’t a-rebellin’ ’gainst you. 
You just can’t sell Rube’s potatoes, nor Judge 
Hopper’s part of Mr. Farrell’s corn. You can’t 
do it ! ” 

“Why, Maria,” he gasped angrily, “it’s all 
Gid’s. That’s a mere kiver.” 

“ It’ll kiver every kernel and every root,” 
said Mrs. Granger, “ and I’m glad Gid’s to be 
taken care of. I’m with him. So’ll you be, 
by and by. Pm glad the pianny’s safe, too, 


how gid’s crop was gathered. 245 

and Marian’s gettin’ on to play it first-rate.” 

Old Joshua Granger was so completely 
puzzled that he was silenced. For the first 
time in his life it had been asserted in his 
presence that a son or daughter of his had per- 
sonal rights which the law protected against any 
act of his. He was their father. They were 
not of age. Their time was his. Their work 
was his. Their wages, if they earned any, were 
his, but there was yet a line where his control 
of them ceased, and he had now somehow 
reached it and saw that he could not cross it. 
What he did not see was the fact that they had 
themselves reached and passed the line the 
moment that they began to expand into the new 
life of thought and action from which he had 
blindly undertaken to restrain them, instead of 
going into it with them. 

For that moment he was contented to go 
back into the house and to the dinner table, 
and to eat in gloomy silence, and then to set off 
to the village, hardly speaking again to anybody. 


246 how gid’s crop was gathered. 

“Gid,” said Marian, as their father left the 
house, “ what are you going to do ? ” 

“ Do ? ” said he. “ Why, I can’t do one thing. 
I can’t sell a potato. Rube’s got to sell ’em. 
His men ’ll begin digging to-morrow. If any- 
body else does it’ll be stealing.” 

“Gideon,” said his mother, “what on earth 
’ll you do with all that money when it comes ? ” 

“ Rube and Judge Hopper say they think 
they know what to do with all they get for their 
potatoes and their corn, too,” said Gid^ “ They 
hope there’ll be a pile of it.” 

“Your father’s got to see ’em ’bout it,” she 
said, with a great sigh of relief. 

“ I don’t believe they’ll tell him,” replied Gid. 
“ I can’t, for I don’t know.” 

Jim Vedder did not come to the house that 
evening, and he may have had his talk with Mr. 
Granger down at the village. At all events the 
old farmer was up bright and early, the next 
morning, and when Joel Pepper and three other 
men went into the field and began to dig pota- 


how gid’s crop was gathered. 247 

toes, Gid and his father were standing by the 
fence, watching them. 

“We’re to clear out as nigh as we can to a 
measured acre,” said Joel, “ and measure up. 
Never did see such a turn-out in my life.” 

There were forty-eight hundred hills in that 
first acre, and it seemed as if there were at least 
that number of exclamations made, by one or 
another, concerning the yield of those tubers. 
Mr. Granger only watched for an hour or so, 
and then he went off to other business, but 
there was a softer look upon his face. Such a 
crop as that was enough to make any old farmer 
smile, especially if his own son raised it. 

“Maria,” he said, as he went through the 
house, “ was I hard on Gid last night ? ” 

“ Pretty hard,” she said. “ He couldn’t upset 
Rube and the Judge, if he wanted to.” 

“Tell you what, Maria,” he responded, 
“ them potatoes ! Go and look ! ” 

She went and she looked and she came back, 
but her husband was gone. So was Gid, for he 


248 HOW gid’s crop was gathered. 

had been measuring potatoes on the ground 
with a half-bushel measure, and he had made a 
calculation and had carried it with him all the 
way into the inner room of a law office, in the 
village. 

“There, Judge Hopper/’ he said, “ that’s the 
way they’re turning out.” 

The jolly old lawyer looked over the figures 
upon the paper handed him. 

“ Rube ! Rube ! ” he shouted. “ Gid Granger 
has won it. Hurrah for Gid ! ” 

For some reason or other there was a great 
hubbub in that office over the news from the 
patch. A little later there was another in the 
office of Deacon Johnson, but while that was 
going on Joshua Granger sat face to face with 
Judge Hopper, and the lawyer’s face was as 
hard as flint. 

“ I know just how you’re fixed,” he said. 
“ Pettibone and Rogers pay twenty cents on 
the dollar and you’ve got to pay the rest, about 
eight thousand. They’ve taken the two thou- 



rube!” SHOUTED JUDGE HOPPER. “ GID HAS WON IT ! ” 













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how gid’s crop was gathered. 251 

sand, and more, you had in the bank already. 
That leaves three notes of two thousand each. 
I’ve bought ’em, and I won’t show you any 
mercy.” 

“ You’ve bought ’em ? ” exclaimed Mr. 
Granger. “Then the farm’s got to go!” 

“ Not the whole of it,” said Judge Hopper 
dryly. “Land won’t bring much at a sheriff’s 
sale, that’s true. What do you call yours 
worth ? ” 

“ All sorts of prices,” said the old farmer. 
“ There’s fifty acres, or more, kind o’ swamp, 
that wouldn’t bring much. About as many 
acres is ledgy and broken, pretty fair timber. 
That ’d go for ’most nothing. Then there’s 
more’n a hundred acres real good land, worth a 
hundred or more an acre. It might bring half 
as much under the hammer, for cash. Nobody 
knows. There’s more’n two hundred, besides 
your corn-lot.” 

“ I can’t show any mercy,” said the judge, 
“ but I’ll deal fair. You give Rube a deed at 


252 how gid’s crop was gathered. 

once for the thirty acres Farrell has in corn 
and I’ll count it in. That’s eighteen hundred 
dollars. Sell Rube the lot the potatoes are on, 
at twelve hundred, and that makes three thou- 
sand. Sell twenty acres at the same rate, just 
back of it, to join the two pieces into one ; that’s 
two thousand dollars more, or five thousand in 
all, and I’ll take your note for a thousand, the 
remainder, and set you free. You’ll have more 
land then than you ever made any good 
use of.” 

The old farmer sprang to his feet and held 
out his hand. 

“Thank you, Judge Hopper,” he exclaimed. 
“ It’s better ’n any way out that I could see. I 
sha’n’t be wiped out altogether. Draw up your 
papers and I’ll sign ’em. So ’ll Maria.” 

He walked out of that office hastily, as if he 
wished to conceal the strong excitement he was 
under, and he walked almost anywhere until it 
was time to go home to dinner. Not until he 
got there did any clear light come to him as to 


how gid’s crop was gathered. 253 

the meaning of that morning’s business. His en- 
tire family stood in the doorway, waiting for him. 

“ Joshua ! ” exclaimed Mrs. Granger, “ Gid’s 
potatoes are turnin’ out over four hundred 
bushels to the acre, and the land’s twelve and 
a half acres ! Think of that ! ” 

“ Gid,” said his father, “ do you know what 
Rube sold ’em for?” 

“ Sixty-five cents,” said Gid, “ and Crumb 
says he was cheated, but they’ll bring a good 
deal over three thousand. Farrell says he’s 
going to get seventy bushel, at least, off from 
every acre of his corn. Hope he will.” 

“Josh,” remarked another voice, away in 
behind the rest, “ I guess it was Gid that held 
the fort for you, after all. Judge Hopper says 
all the land he took from you ’ll go to Gid, and 
there’ll be only a debt of ’bout fifteen hundred 
on it, when the corn’s sold, and he’ll give him 
till he’s of age to pay it up, if he doesn’t do it 
sooner. Says every acre of it’s worth a hundred 
and fifty.” 


254 H0W GID’S CROP WAS GATHERED. 

“ So Gid’s got a farm of sixty-two acres,” said 
his father, very thoughtfully. “Gid, what are 
you going to do ? ” 

“ Do ? ” said Gid. “ Why, I’m going to be a 
farmer. Don’t want to be anything else.” 

“ No slouch about him,” said Sergeant Elder 
Crane. “ I was half afraid he’d want to go to 
college.” 

“ No, I don’t,” said Gid. “ I want to go to 
school for two or three years and to do some 
farming all the while, but I want all the books 
and all the newspapers ” — 

“ I don’t care if you litter up the whole house 
with ’em ! ” exclaimed his father. “ Not an 
acre of that land’s gone out of the family and 
all the old notes are paid.” 

“ One of these days, though,” continued Gid, 
“ I mean to make a big crop of something and 
go all over Europe ” — 

“Like Jenny Trumbull and her husband,” 
said Mattie, and there was a great tremor of 
triumph in the voice with which her mother 


HOW gid’s crop was gathered. 


2 55 


added at that point : “ Joshua, how ’bout Mattie 
and her piano ?” 

“ She can do all the music she wants to,” said 
Mr. Granger. “ I just do wish I could do some- 
thing for her ! ” 

“ Father,” said Gid, “Judge Hopper promised 
to keep back cash enough for Marian to go to 
the Institute for a year, at least, and we’ll know 
what to do by that time.” 

“ He’s a perfect brick ! ” said Elder Crane, 
but at that moment Marian was very nearly 
choking Gid — mainly because a choke in her 
own throat prevented her from speaking. 

“ We must fix the house up some,” began 
Mr. Granger, but there was a strangely dreamy 
look on his face, instead of the hard, stern 
frown of dissatisfaction which had been there 
so long, and he paused for a moment before he 
added : “ Sergeant, I can’t quite make it out. 
How did this ’ere thing come to pass ? ” 

“Josh,” replied the Elder, “don’t you re- 
member the smooth-bore muskets they gave us 


256 how gid’s crop was gathered. 

when we ’listed? Then ’twas rifles. Now it’s 
breech-loaders. A young feller that’s trained 
as you and I was trained ’d have about as much 
chance nowadays as an old hoss pistol ’d have 
’mong a lot of revolvers. You’d ought to let Gid 
and Mattie have all the chances a going.” 

“Just what I’ll do!” said Joshua Granger 
emphatically, and they all went into the house, 
just as Gid remarked : 

“ I forgot one thing, Marian — Rube Thomp- 
son’s coming up to supper. He wants to have 
a talk with father about the land titles, and he 
said something about the quartette and Miss 
Granger.” 

It is very remarkable the way in which some 
crops will turn out. Only three seasons later 
Judge Hopper and his wife came out one even- 
ing to the Sewing Society at the Granger home- 
stead. It was an exceedingly pretty place, and 
all the land around it looked like a garden. 
Everybody was there, of course, and Mrs, 


how gid’s crop was gathered. 257 

Granger and her husband and Gid were busily 
welcoming their guests. 

Almost the first words that Mrs. Hopper 
uttered, after she got in, were : 

“ Gid, when did you hear from Rube and 
Mattie ? ” 

“ Only yesterday,” said Gid. “ They’re in 
Paris yet. She can’t get away from the art 
galleries. She’ll never give up art any more 
than I will farming.” . 

“Gid,” said the judge, “Rube’s house ’ll be 
ready for him when he gets back. It’ll be paid 
for, too, if your potato-patch does as well as the 
first you raised.” 

“ I hope it will — I hope it will,” interrupted 
old Joshua Granger. “ My part of the farm’s 
doing fine, and every dollar from it this year 
goes to set ’em up.” 

“ Their supplies ’ll hold out,” said the voice 
of Sergeant-Elder Crane, just behind the judge, 
“and Gid’s got his whole camp in prime 


order.” 


258 HOW gid’s crop was gathered. 


c& 


“ 0, but I want to see Marian ! ” said Mrs. 
Granger. “ I want my daughter ! ” 

“ She’ll come back,” said the old soldier, 
“ and by and by you can send out Gid on re- 
cruiting service and he’ll find another for you, 
somewhere.” 



























































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